Bling My Coach

Please vote for the Pink Car Rally coach to win the bling my coach competition by voting for them here
The Pink Car Rally is in aid of a fledgling children’s charity, called the Little Princess Trust, which provides children who have lost their hair (primarily through cancer treatments) with ‘real hair’ wigs. If we win this competition, we can take 49 pink passengers on the coach and if each one raised an average of £50 Sponsorship, we could raise in the region of £2500 for the charity!! How fantastic would that be? It means that the charity could provide wigs for 8 more children!! We NEED to win!! Please help us…..

Please look at the short film, which is introduced by Gail Porter, on the Little Princess Trust’s website (www.littleprincesses.org.uk) It tells the story of how the charity helped Melissa….

Vetting – A Passport For Abusers

There is an immutable law of unintended consequences. The new child abuse vetting laws will, in the end have entirely the opposite effect to that which is intended.

One thing that law enforcement and the abuse industry agree on, is that intentional abusers are clever and single-minded in achieving their purpose.

To stop them we are now going to assume that everyone is an abuser, unless they have a piece of paper that says they are not. Having got that piece of paper, an abuser is at liberty to insinuate themselves into positions of trust from where they will be able to abuse to their hearts content. No one will question them – “They’ve been checked, so they must be okay. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with me – it’s up to the Government.” Will be the cry of anyone with suspicions.

And so, as with the Catholic Church and many other institutions before, abusers will be protected by the very system that seeks to get rid of them.

It used to be said that it takes a whole village to bring up a child. Well, we don’t have villages anymore. We have given up responsibility for the bringing up of children to the state. The state is to be trusted less that anyone else in this matter. Now, with vetting, we are giving up even more to the state. We are giving away trust and personal responsibility.

The new vetting scheme came out of the Soham Murders. Thanks to government interference through the Data Collection Act, the police did not pass on information about Ian Huntley, the murderer. Maybe with a scheme to stop his sort entering schools in the first place the tragedy could have been averted. But if the police had passed on the information about a known abuser the chances are it could have been averted – that time – but Huntley was on a downward spiral that would have led him to commit an horrendous crime in due course.

The law of unintended consequences came into play.

So, I predict, within ten years we will be having an inquest into:

How could a ring of abusers have infiltrated the Vetting Headquarters and placed a high level worker inside to change data on known abusers?

How the Vetting System destroyed lives and caused the suicides of those innocently mistaken to be someone else and accused of their crimes.

How those cleared by the system still managed to continue practicing their abusing ways because everyone thought they must be okay because they had been cleared.

This is all before we account for the damage that will be done to society. The State has got too large and too intrusive. It’s job should be to facilitate personal responsibility – that is what keeps an eye out for bad behaviour and keeps us all on the right side of the line.

Where’s Wally Now?

Thanks to Damian Harvey for giving me an idea for today’s Blog. It’s quite hard keeping up this blog-a-day thing. Damian noted on Facebook that he’d spent the day driving his kids to and fro to some music event in Leeds. He wondered if parents drove their kids to Woodstock in the 60s.

Well, of course they didn’t. Nowadays the parents are more likely to join the kids at the gig! Going to festivals was a generational rebellion thing.

Somehow, when I was 15, I managed to get my parents to let me go off to the last Great Free Festival in WIndsor Great Park with my mate Godfrey, to meet up with our gang, who were also travelling in pairs. It took us all day to hitch from Bedford to Slough where we caught the local train to Windsor.

The town was heaving with the unwashed. Queues of hippies lined the streets to get into the toilets under the town hall where Prince Charles and Camilla were later married. I didn’t have a tent, just a sleeping bag wrapped up in a tarpaulin.

It was crazy. There was no real organisation, just a flatbed lorry as a stage. Most people were stoned. All the time you could hear the cry, “Where’s Wally?” wafting over the crowds. Wally was a mythical drug dealer. I think if you called out for him, someone would approach you and sell you some dope. I was more of a hippy than my friends, indeed several people used to call me “hippy” in those days. But I didn’t do drugs. I puffed a few joints that were passed around but I didn’t like it and was terrified of anything stronger. At that age I had a friend who was a heroine addict who eventually died of an overdose. I couldn’t see any glamour in it. Also there were serious sanctions for being caught in possession of even the smallest amount of any kind of drug and in those days the “fuzz” were quite happy to plant it on you if they suspected you but couldn’t find any on you.

At the festival, I bumped into Glyn, my old best friend from my previous school. He and his brother had gone full time into hippydom and were quite stoned. I joined their camp as they were really quite together. They were raiding for firewood and had a nice little campfire going and were actually cooking stuff on it. I had a few tins of beans and a can opener. That’s all I had to live off for the weekend! Glyn had turned into a fabulously romantic character, bare-chested with a yellow velvet cloak and long, flaming red hair. He looked every bit like a Viking God and had picked up the attitude to go with it.

There were no toilets and luckily no rain or otherwise the place would have turned into a cholera breeding ground. Stoned hippies were urinating and defacating where ever they liked. There were no nice Highland Spring plastic water bottles to be bought from Tesco in those days, no catering vans or mobile toilets. No event industry. It was a bit like a modern Flashmob. The word went out and everyone turned up. The town pretty much ran out of food. I think emergency standpipes were set up so we could get a drink and splash our faces.

As I remember, Mud and the Pink Fairies were the major Bands. There was no running order. No one knew who was playing. Bands just turned up and played. The first you knew was playing when someone introduced the next band. The generators would often pack up half way through a set. Ah, such innocent days. Not like today, mollycoddled in Stadia, with barcode tickets and overpriced merchandise bought through your bluetooth phone.

We were awoken at daybreak on the last day, it must have been the Monday or Tuesday after the August Bank Holiday. The “fuzz” moved in to “bust” us! “Move on or be arrested,” they said, kicking the sleepy heads awake and itching to arrest and have a go at anyone who stood up to them.

Us weekend hippies packed our bags and slinked away back to normality, giving the town of Windsor back to it’s inhabitants.

I guess most of those old hippies are establishment old farts like me now. You can’t tell me that 90% of the great and the good of today never inhaled.

Actually it really was an exciting time. No one knew what the rules were. Not like now when anything that might be fun must have a health and safety audit and a clear profit stream. No wonder you see videos on YouTube of kids racing on top of cars and doing stupid stuff like that. Kids do stupid things and learn by their mistakes. My generation did the most stupid things and realised how dangerous they were and decided to protect our kids from themselves.

Where’s Wally now? I imagine he’s got a clip board and is organising safe family events somewhere.

Either that or he’s wearing a bobble hat and a stripy jumper and is happily walking around in the world of children’s books trying to hide in the crowd. Only the walking stick gives a clue to his former, shady life. He never quite walked properly again after the “fuzz” beat three shades of shit out of him in a cell in Windsor police station back in seventies. He’d been dealing in illegal substances all weekend and done pretty good business and had to pay his dues.

Driving

Phew! Just got back from my first drive with my dear son, Ed. He’s had lessons and his mum has been out with him, but this was my first time. He’s very calm and quite together, but we had an interesting route.

I took him to a very strange junction. He couldn’t work out where to go and stalled in the middle of it. My fault, I think. Then we met several enormous tractors down narrow country lanes and, the most difficult maneuver, getting past a couple or horse riders that didn’t want to go in single file, on a hill in a narrow lane. He did it though!

So many things to think of at the same time.

The Wonderful Game of Pirates

If you read my entry about School Stacking Chairs on Monday, you may wonder about the game of Pirates that I mentioned. I don’t know if everyone played it or if it was peculiar to my school, which was a boarding prep school in Surrey.

It was Mr Turner, the new PE teacher, fresh from Loughborough College, Who spiced the game up and made us take more risks.

The Wall bars were swung out and all the gym equipment was strewn around the floor. These were islands and were places of safety. If you “fell in the water” by putting your foot on the ground, you were drownded and out of the game.

One boy was chosen to be the Pirate and he had to tag someone else. That person then became a pirate too. The winner was the last boy to be tagged – who then went on to be the pirate for the next game.

Each time we played it, we became a bit more adventurous. Soon the we found it was possible to cling onto the window frame and inch your way around the room. The stacked chairs became a very dangerous haven. Too much rapid movement could bring them all crashing down on the floor.

The favoured starting place was on the low beam that connected the two sets of wall bars. Here you were safe for ages, holding onto the ropes that dangled from the connecting bar at the top of the wall bars.

Mt Turner was a great Teacher and soon soon turned us into fearless gymnasts. One day One of the Pirates just walked across the beam tagging everyone on the way. He’d learned to balance in Gym Club. The ropes were no longer safe. We took to shaking the beams and wall bars, to try and knock them off, but Mr Turner had trained us well. The best gymnasts could walk across a beam even though it was being shaken violently from side to side.

The high beam then became the new reserve, but not for long. It must have been two meters high, but still one foolhardy boy decided to walk across it. I remember the room going silent. Everyone held their breath. The Pirate inched out along the beam. His quarry, was paralysed. He couldn’t believe his place of safety was being compromised. When the Pirate got his man, there was huge cheer. We knew the game had moved onto something more serious.

The last hiding place was at the top of the ropes. The bravest would shin up to the top and hang on to the steel bar. A pirate, gaining control of the ropes, would fling the ropes around in the hope of dislodging his quarry. If the pirate climbed up the rope, the boy at the top would try to knock him off. It had become quite a serious game by now.

It was when the ambulance came and got the third child with broken bones that the rules were changed, and the game petered out. It wasn’t fun anymore!

Were we tougher? Probably not. Put today’s children in the same conditions and they would do exactly the same. Its our nature to push the boundaries until we get hurt. We used to have to learn by our mistakes. Now, Health and Safety make sure we can’t make the mistakes to learn the lessons from. All our risk taking is done in the safety of computer simulated environments these days.

That’s probably why the banks crashed. All those bankers never played pirates when they were young. They’ve never learned that some mistakes have very real and painful outcomes. Playing with other people’s money on computer screens is not real life. It’s pretty much the same game as the guys who are playing games on the net to try and get your pin numbers. They are all playing to win your money.

A bit more Rufty-tufty child’s play is what we need! Oh I haven’t mentioned British Bulldog 123! Maybe another time.

Anthony Browne – Authors in Schools

Dear, lovely, sensible Anthony Browne, Children’s Laureate, had to put his two pennyworth into the Authors in Schools debate. I suspect he would rather have not got involved, but his position means that the press will come to him first for a comment. I think he mediated his way through the minefield quite well and managed to not upset anyone in the process.

He says that authors and illustrators aren’t special and that children need to know that we were the same as them once. That’s true, but it’s not true. When you meet Anthony Browne and look deep into his eyes, you see his famous character, Willie, staring back at you. Like a dog owner that looks like his pet, Tony either started out looking like a Gorilla or he grew to look like one.

Anthony Browne - Children's Laureate

When you meet him, you know instantly that he is special. To have produced the work that he has and to have received the acclaim that he has is not an accident. He has an innate artistic, creative quality that you have to be born with. On top of that he has obviously worked extremely hard over the years, doggedly perfecting his craft. A real master at work makes everything they do look easy. Their fans can have no idea how many hours, how much effort, self-discipline, self-knowledge and general grit and bloody-mindedness has brought them to that stage of life.

That is the true inspiration to children – to let them know that they can’t walk straight into a TV presenter’s job or become a pop star celebrity without working for it or having a grain of talent. Programmes like Britain’s Got Talent encourage the view that you just walk onto a stage, do a turn and become famous. It works for BGT to promote the show in that way. We never see the work and sacrifice that all those winners have put into their acts already.

Tony says that children are creative and that they stop drawing and painting and writing as they grow up and become self-conscious and fall prey to peer-pressure. That too is the reason why Anthony Browne is special. He fought through all that teenage rubbish and remained true to himself – original – creative.

I know how hard it is. “No son of mine is going to be a namby-pamby artist!” my father yelled, when I suggested going to art school. I fought through, but a bit of encouragement at that time might have saved me twenty years of struggle. I had one Bank Manager who said it was, “nice that I could make a bit of money out of my hobby,” but he wasn’t going to approve a temporary overdraft, even though I had a fistful of publishing contracts from major publishers in my hand to show him. He would rather have seen me and my young family lose our home.

Anyone who rises above the ordinary is special. They have to be to get there. They have to believe that they are special too – otherwise there is no point going on. They may be self-effacing and humble, but deep inside is a burning belief in who they are and what they do. And these are the people who are heroes to children – that children look up to and emulate. These people should be honoured guests. But how can they be when, after you have ascertained whether they are prepared to make the time to come and visit your school, the first question you ask them is, “can you prove to me that you are not a paedophile?” It’s just not the kind of question you ask of an honoured guest.

Asking the question proves nothing. Those who wish to do harm to children will always find a way, no Quango will ever stop that. This law came about because of the panic over school caretaker, Ian Huntley. The Police knew all about him. The laws were there to protect Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, but someone decided that the Data Protection Act was more serious. So Now we have a massive quango and database collecting information on the innocent, spreading suspicion throughout the education system. Whereas we used to have a system that checked up on the guilty. The new system will just push potential child-harmers out of the schools and into the domestic setting, which is not checked by law and which is the setting in which 99% of harm occurs.

Anthony Browne, believe me, you are special. And so was the trust that we have lost behind the security fences and video entry phones that schools hide behind today.

Independant Safeguarding

Oh dear, I’ve been hoping that this would all go away and we would come to our senses, but it seems that I’m going to have to get myself a certificate to prove I’m not a paedophile so that I can still visit schools.

Looking at the the ISA website I found the glaring loophole within thirty seconds.

Apparently, children in schools need protecting from children’s authors, who are accompanied at all times and work with groups of up to 300 at a time.

Those who actually want to harm children do not need to register – indeed it is in their interest not to. If they have a dodgy past they will become a barred person and then will break the law by entering Specific Places and carrying out Specific Activities. However, if they are not checked, they are free to enter private and domestic places and employment with impunity.

Where does 99% of all the damage to children occur? In the home of course, in domestic environments. So the overpaid, quango nonsense is powerless in the one place that real harm to children occurs. The scheme is nothing but a cash-raising enterprise – certainly in the case of visiting authors and those who would pass on their experience and expertise. It’s a tax on those who work with children. Sit back and watch as volunteers disappear. It is totally demeaning to go cap in hand to a faceless organisation and ask to be proved a nice person. Where will the youth workers, Arkelas and Brown Owls come from now?

And what message are we teaching our children? Everyone is a paedophile until proven innocent. This has turned the whole basis of our legal system upside down.

Watch the world of children and adults move further apart. Parents will soon be excluded from entering school premises. They pretty well are already, dropping their children off at the barbed wire security gates under the watchful eye of the surveillance camera. Parents only ever need to talk to schools through the gate intercom. No wonder they never turn up for parent’s evenings.

When do adults and children ever meet? How are children supposed to know what they are meant to grow up to be, if all the good people stay away from them in fear of being smeared. Children now are to be feared.

Who now would help a lost child? The irony is that most of us now would stand back and let a kidnapper take a child because we think we would be accused of something if we stepped in to help.

I was asked for a certificate a couple of years ago by a museum. I said I didn’t have one and didn’t see the point as I’d be on public show all day and all the children would be chaperoned by their parents. They hummed and hah-ed but in the end said okay. When I arrived, the two Gents toilets had been reassigned as one for Men and one for Boys! Nothing was said, but what message does that give? The organisers, of course, will come out with the usual guff about insurance and covering themselves, but what they were really saying is that all men and me in particular are a danger to boys, in particular. Notice that it was okay for women to take boys and girls into the toilets with them…

…Oh dear, didn’t we just have a case of arrests of a nursery nurse up to no good? Wasn’t she a woman? She would have been checked too. Fat lot of good that did! Anyone wanting to harm children will do so. Checks and laws won’t stop them. The laws will only create division in society. Except that children don’t count as society. They are just a nuisance that have to be put up with and hidden away until they are old enough to enter adult society.

I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and pay – I’m fixed up to do loads of visits next year.

I’m not being a good blogger! All this came about from an article in Guardian. It’s great that Philip Pullman stand sup for us like this. Most children’s authors earn below the minimum wage from their writing, so school visiting is often the major part of their income. They will meekly sign up and be done with it.

I’m so used to being treated with suspicion in schools now that it comes as a surprise to be trusted. Last year I went to a school where I was met and showed around the school, visiting all the classes one by one, by two children. The school were so friendly and relaxed, that I mentioned it to them as being unusual. “But, you’re our honoured guest!” they said in surprise. “We invited you!”