Cat Yak

Out playing with the camera and managed this one. It was probably about 80ft away, having just launched from a tree.

Not mine, as found elsewhere.

This is Cake, sitting in a cardboard box on the windowsill, apparently unaware of me poking the camera lens behind the curtain.

See you on the other side.

OK, a bit of a trim has occurred to remove apparently inactive (or at least non-commenting) friends from the list.

Usual caveats etc.

One of the hardest parts about having a cat is the bit at the end involving a shovel. Goodbye, beautiful cat.

That was impressive, I was sitting at the computer, listening to music when all of a sudden there's a "Whoomph", the music cuts off and the monitors go dark. The UPS started beeping frantically and an interesting burning smell wafted up.

I pulled the plug on the PC, hauled it out from under the desk and took the lid off. I replaced the power supply (I keep spares) and put it back together again. I didn't immediately realise that the input fuse on the UPS had gone, so everything shut down again due to a flat battery, but having replaced that, hopefully it's now all OK.

I dismantled the dead power supply and noticed that (a) the fan doesn't rotate and (b) several capacitors are bulging. I assume one has vented but it's not immediately obvious which one.

The tumble dryer stopped working properly. We had noticed that clothes weren't drying properly and last week I happened to open the door while it was operating and the contents were cold. It was finally excavated last night, and I dismantled bits of it to get to the heater at the back. A few quick checks confirmed that the heater coils were all intact and one of the thermostats was dodgy. I tried and failed to get a replacement in Cambridge today, so I ordered on-line. Until the package arrives, the dryer will be in bits (fortunately it lives on a shelf). It's about five minutes' work to put it all back together again, and the spare parts cost seven quid. I wonder what a repair shop would have charged for that?

The CSF Select Committee published the submissions to its inquiry into the Badman Review this week.

I've had a read of quite a few of them, trying to pick off the ones I recognise as associated with the government side, plus the one home educator who appears to be on their side.

So far I've discovered that DCSF thinks that:

Home education is the education of children in and around the house by their parents or those appointed by the parents. It can be seen as a temporary or permanent alternative to the education which is provided by the state or by private schooling.

and Ofsted thinks that:

Current guidance states that parents may employ other people to educate their children and that parents are responsible for 'ensuring that those whom they engage are suitable to have access to children'. Registration would not of itself prevent those who have a conviction for offences against children, including parents, step-parents or privately-employed home tutors, from home educating children. Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks should be a requirement of registration.

and the Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) thinks that:

Schools retain a responsibility for pupils and we agree that where parents remove children from school to home education, the school should in the first instance respond to this responsibility, and be required to inform the local authority of the change in status of the pupil from a school roll registration to home educated.

The first is obviously misguided, given that much of the education is not in and around the house, but it might explain why they're concerned about socialisation and the fact that the children might not be seen by others.

The Ofsted one is scary, because it implies that all home educators should have a CRB check. Obviously this could be expanded to state that anyone who comes into contact with children between 8:30am and 4pm should have a CRB check, seeing as parents of schoolchildren, don't need one. Obviously it's something about those particular hours that are dangerous.

The ADCS is unaware of current law, given that schools are already required to inform the LA when a child is deregistered. No wonder there are the bad cases of abuse that hit the news when the people in charge don't even know the laws pertaining to their job. Why bother giving them any new ones if they can't use what they've got properly?

To liven it up a bit, there's a real gem in the submission from Paula Rothermel, who has done research on home education.

At our first interview Mr Badman was interested in what I had to say. His opening question was to ask me if home educating mothers suffered from Munchhausen's by Proxy. I thought this to be a curious starting point - that of questioning whether home education is a symptom of mental illness. I am not medically qualified, but I was able to inform Mr Badman that there is no research evidence available that I am aware of, which makes this link.

Fascinating. So if you're a home educating mother, he thinks you're mentally ill.

The vast majority of submissions can be summarised as saying to the government "Fuck off, you obviously have no clue if you accept this pile of shit as valid evidence and are not qualified to be creating legislation covering home education". Some of the contributions are from professionals who contributed to the review as well.

Prof. James Conroy, who was the only person with experience of home education on Badman's expert group said

However, more significant that the recommendations are the grounds upon which they have been established. In my 30 odd years of professional life in education I have rarely encountered a process, the entirety of which was so slap dash, panic driven, and nakedly and naively populist.

The Home Education Research Association, listed as a consultee by Badman, said

HERA strongly believes that the conduct of the Review and the Report itself are riddled with serious and far-reaching flaws that invalidate the Report Recommendations and any DCSF action taken upon them, including the 11 June 2009 Consultation that the DCSF launched simultaneously with the Report.

Alison Sauer, from the Sauer Consultancy Limited, was concerned with the accuracy of Badman's meeting notes:

1. The review misquotes or selectively quotes evidence received.
1.1. Meeting notes taken by the review team during my meetings with Mr Badman do not agree with my notes of the same meetings.
[...]
1.1.3. Upon receipt of the inaccurate DCSF meeting notes I contacted a number of other people listed in the "Annex B" of the report as having been giving evidence and found that my case was by no means unique. This indicates that the inaccuracies in meeting notes of my meetings with Mr Badman were neither unique nor exceptional, undermining the evidence basis of both report and recommendations

A retired social worker notes that

Graham Badman is not an expert in child protection. His review contains too many platitudes about 'safeguarding' children that are actually meaningless. He conflates objections to non-state education with safeguarding issues and uses vague concerns about child abuse as a way of undermining the concept of home education. It is totally inappropriate to suggest that registration of home educated children is necessary to 'safeguard' them.

Even the Church of England put the boot in with:

32 Having read the Review, we still stand by the final paragraph of our response:

32.1 "We have seen no evidence to show that the majority of home educated children do not achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes, and are therefore not convinced of the need to change the current system of monitoring the standard of home education. Where there are particular concerns about the children in a home-educating this should be a matter for Children's Services."

For balance, such as it is, this is the contribution of the one home educator who agreed with DCSF. However, he also once said

"Third rate hack freelancers, into which category I am obliged to place myself, have a deplorable habit of misrepresenting themselves to both editors and also the public at large. It's perfectly true that I described myself as a teacher in that article. However if you were to be a reader of True Detective, then you would a few years ago have found me describing myself as a former detective from Scotland Yard! And don't even ask what I claimed to be when writing for The Lady..... Why, I even change gender for women's magazines. I know, I'm utterly shameless, but what can I do? I have to pay the bills like everybody else. Or maybe I should go on benefits?"

He also writes articles for national newspapers.

So, if there's any justice, left at Westminster, the Select Committee should produce a fairly scathing response to the DCSF proposals and hopefully get them to drop legislation. However, given the response of Ed Balls to their rejection of his candidate for Child CatcherCommissioner, they'd probably just be pissing in the wind anyway.

Home education in England has been changed forever by the events of this year. As a group we've always kept our heads down and got on with life. Now we've been disturbed, we're more likely to be politically active, and indeed, I think we've all learned a lot about how Parliament works and how to use it to our advantage. Lots of media contacts have been made as well, and we seem to have some degree of sympathy for our position. The Conservative Party seem to be coming down on our side against the review and its proposals, so there could be a fight to get legislation through Parliament. It's going to be an interesting few months before Balls&Co get their P45s.

(updated 8th Nov)

OK, one for Brits to get annoyed about.

The Telegraph has an article on it here.

Drivers will fall victim to reforms which will see people who are acquitted by the courts expected to foot the majority of their own defence costs. It is thought some innocent motorists will plead guilty to reduce their costs.

There's a petition on the No.10 site at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/CostsRecovery/ which you can sign, for what good it might do. The road charging one clocked up over a million signatures, perhaps we can drive this one to do the same.

We have to wait until May/June to get rid of this bunch of crooks?

They've implemented DNS hijacking, so if you mistype something in a web browser, you get to a page of adverts instead of an 'unknown host' error message. To opt out of this, visit:

https://my.virginmedia.com/advancederrorsearch/settings

I've seen claims that there's porn in the results, but I can't comment because I opted out before examining the search results.

If you do anything other than web browsing then it can really screw that up because it'll return the address of their ad server rather than an error if you mistype a hostname, and non-http traffic won't talk to their web server.

Sensibly they opt you out on the basis of your cable modem MAC address, so it'll take your entire home network out if you've got more than one machine. Obviously it also works for everything and doesn't rely on a cookie.

Inspired by the fact that the Perseids are around, I went out to look, and took the camera. Sadly I didn't capture any meteor trails, but it was interesting to see how the camera performs in near darkness. I set it to 30 second exposures (maximum it would do, at least without finding the manual). It's a Nikon D60 with the supplied lens and manual focus.


The first shot is roughly where the Perseids originate. Cassiopeia is lurking at the top of the shot and Perseus is in the clouds. I'm not too sure about the orange cast to the clouds, the sun had gone by this time so it's possibly the street lights of Ely. The view is vaguely NE.


The Big Dipper is lurking on the RH side, with two of its stars in/on the tree. The camera is looking roughly NW for this one.


For this one I tried the bigger lens. It wouldn't allow me to capture the whole of the Big Dipper, so I had a look at Cassiopeia instead. Interesting that even with a 30 second exposure, the stars appear to have moved slightly; I know they do, but I'm surprised to see it visible over that short an interval.

Ed Balls has responded to the concerns of home educators and even the BBC noticed he'd done it.

Of course, having read his letter, I feel that if his head isn't already up his arse then I would like to put it there.

All the jumping up and down and disturbing MPs seems to be having some effect. The Children, Schools and Families Committee are going to hold a short inquiry into the review. However, this might just be part of the Evil Plan where the obviously outrageous bits that were never expected to pass are ditched and the merely obnoxious bits that they really wanted are kept, with the assumption that we'll all just accept them and be relieved that it wasn't worse.

They're wrong. The only acceptable result is scrapping the entire report and doing things properly with sensible and unbiased consultation. "If I were goin' there I wouldn't start from here".

The reasoning is simple, there have been a number of cases where someone's been caught out by the strict letter of the law as written, despite assurances of "that's not what we meant". Ask Iceland about the anti-terror laws, a Canadian woman who married a Brit but can't come back to the UK until she's 21 even though it's obviously not a forced marriage (having to remain in Canada for 18 months was described by an official as a small inconvenience) and all those who were spied upon by local councils abusing CCTV. Quite simply, we do not trust the government to do the right thing, and there are already plenty of examples of local authority officials overstepping their remit and trying to insist that they are allowed to do things when they're not.

I still have my old video camera - should the law be changed to allow them right of access to my home then I'll be videoing the entire proceedings. I will inform them that this is happening and that if they don't like it, the door is right there.

Go to Google.co.uk, enter "Graham Badman". Note the interesting message at the bottom of the page.

Next go to Yahoo's search engine and give it the same search. Note what comes up highly on Yahoo but not Google. Repeat with google.com and note the lack of the message and the presence of the previously missing item lower down the list.

Then wander over to whatdotheyknow and see this interesting reply from DCSF.

Put all of this in the context that home educators have been tarred with the child abuse brush by DCSF, Badman and education ministers and consider who's been maligned the worst.

ETA: It's now disappeared. At time of writing, searching for "baroness morgan" (education minister in the Lords) gives the same legal notice.

It says "In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org."

OK, some screen captures. The Safari one was GIMPed to hide the other tab titles, it turns out that Susan still had a window open from earlier so I grabbed it.

( Cut because they're huge so the text can be readCollapse )

Anyone want to sign one of the government petitions about home education?

It calls on them  to reject the Badman Review on home education, a deeply flawed document (the evidence to discredit it is mounting) and not the sort of thing that a competent government should be using to formulate policy.

Please write to your MP on the subject as well - "thin end of the wedge" and "the Stasi would be proud" are some of the more repeatable comments made about the proposals.

The review keeps on about how it's important for children to be seen by 'other' adults and that school staff perform this important function for schoolchildren. Nice to see they're safe at school, and that abuse is easily spotted. The best evidence the home education community has come up with so far (more accurate and more detailed than Badman's efforts) suggest that the national abuse rate for all children is about 1.8% and that for home educated children alone is 0.8%.

So, please contact your MP and express disgust at the way the government is railroading through proposals to destroy home education and allow a gross invasion of privacy.

Feel free to crosspost this.

ETA: Some links as to why it's bad.

From a social worker

A set of links pulling it apart in small bites. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Lord Lucas has some good comments in his blog. And here.

A letter to an MP.

This one has links to various reviews of the review.

Also read the proposals, with 2.3 and 2.6 of special note. Would you like a local authority official to be allowed access to your house and to interview your child without you present? The registration requirements are totally inappropriate for autonomous education, and they're putting in a lovely big hole in the rules so that little Johnny can be taken out of school to be home educated on the beaches of Ibiza for two weeks and then put back into school.

Ah well, our turn today. Queso was out all night (as were all the cats), and this morning when he appeared he was limping badly. One trip to the local vet later, and I had the option of treating him for a sprain and taking him in for x-ray on Monday if the problem was still there, or just taking him in today. So he went today, no point in delaying things more than necessary. They've kept him there because he needs to be sedated and his eating status is uncertain and we're waiting for a phone call later today. Hopefully it is only a sprain.

Warning - this is not politically correct.

Freedom comes at a price. Sometimes this price is obvious, as with
casualties during a war, other times it is hidden. Nelson Mandela paid a
high price for what he achieved. Another aspect is the price paid for
our individual freedoms. Every year, people are killed and injured on
the roads, but there is no thought of taking away our freedom to drive,
except in a few limited individual cases. The public accepts that in
order for most of us to enjoy that freedom of movement, there is an
acceptable casualty rate. We'd all like it to be lower but would all
fight against any restrictions that would curtail our perceived right to
drive.

In the same way, some children will suffer because we're not all
monitored 24/7. There have been some high-profile cases, but when you
consider how many, compared to the number involved in road accidents, it
is actually quite low. It is the price to be paid for allowing the vast
majority of us to make our own decisions without government
interference. We also know that no matter how draconian the rules, the
casualty rate will never be zero, so, as in the road case, there's a
rate considered acceptable for the freedom it grants. There are
occasional adjustments - another example being airport security - as bad
things come to light and then recede in the public memory, but on
average we put up with it. The acceptability of the price also depends
on whether you are the one unlucky enough to have to pay it on behalf of
everyone else.

The "if it saves even one child" argument is fallacious. Over-zealous
government officials with too much power have the capacity to destroy
families just as much as the parents, and there are plenty of cases of
that on record too.

Benjamin Franklin had it right:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Cake brought home a dead mouse last night. At the time I thought it was cute. However, this morning there was a dead blackbird in the hallway, and I've just seen another one by the side gate outside. I've told him that rodents are fine, but that he should lay off the birds.



I've noticed the blackbirds feeding in the garden and ignoring the cats, with the cats largely ignoring them as well. It appears the rules have changed.

Someone's writing a spoof Graham Badman blog. It's quite clever, and is managing to make most of the points against his review while still being entertaining.

For reasons too complicated to explain, I typed a word into Google Maps this morning. It didn't quite show what I'd hoped to find, but it did throw up this one. I guess it really is true that Americans don't know what it means.

If your aircraft ashtrays are missing or otherwise not serviceable then you can't take off on a revenue flight. This is despite the fact that smoking is banned on pretty much all airlines. A BA 747 was apparently delayed for half an hour by this problem recently.

I know the reasoning behind it, even though at face value it seems absurd. Anyone else got any thoughts?

My NSLU2 storage box, upgraded some time ago to 'proper' Linux rather than the Linksys version:

[dave@aivas ~]$ uptime
 11:46:57 up 369 days, 13:25, load average: 1.05, 1.01, 1.00


So it's sat there happily for over a year now, without doing anything silly, and no significant power cuts (at least not beyond the capacity of the UPS to handle). It handles DHCP for my network, and is one of the local DNS and NTP machines. It's also running an IMAP server, although I don't actually use it, same with an ftp server. I must have been playing one day, because I don't remember configuring that. I just need to keep an eye on it because the 100GB disk only has 27GB left, although that's not as bad as the other server, which is down to its last 3.6GB.

It appears that posting using Deepest Sender works just fine apart from the fact that it won't crosspost to LJ.