Archive for September 2010

Penalising parents for exercising their rights?

#2 son is due to start secondary school next year and we’ve just put in his application for the same school #1 goes to and his preferences for the LEA-controlled schools.

#1 son goes to an excellent independent school (top performing state secondary in England) and #2 son wants to go there as well but the school is badly over-subscribed – they turn down over 1,000 applicants every year – so the odds are stacked against him getting there.

For his LEA preferences, we haven’t chosen the nearest school to home because it’s rubbish which presents us with a bit of a problem – if he doesn’t get into the same school as #1, how is he going to get there?

I drop #1 son off at school in the morning on my way to work as it’s in vaguely the same direction as the office but the other two schools on #2’s list are in the opposite direction.  What we need is for one of them to be able to go to school by bus but there’s a problem: none of the schools is more than 3 miles from home and a weekly bus pass for a child is £10 – taking off school holidays, that’s about £400 a year!

The 3 mile rule is what the British government says is the maximum distance a child of secondary school age in England can be expected to walk to school.  There are exceptions for children with medical conditions of course and #2 has a heart problem so he fits the criteria for getting a free bus pass … but only if he goes to the local, rubbish school.

You can get a free school bus pass for your children if you meet the usual criteria and it’s this that has annoyed me.  If you’re unemployed your children can have a free school bus pass.  If you’re an asylum seeker your children can have a free school bus pass.  If your household income is below a certain level your children can have a free bus pass.

It may surprise my regular readers to know that it’s not the freebies for the workshy or asylum seekers that irritates me, it’s the latter.  I work, I earn an above average wage but I have 4 children.  Someone on minimum wage with 1 child getting income support, housing benefit, etc., will have as much, if not more, disposable income than me but the household income criteria is an arbitrary threshold, it doesn’t go up if you have more children to pay for.

Ok, so it’s my choice to have 4 children (although I did inherit 2 stepsons) but if the system offers help for parents – which my taxes pay for – then it should do so fairly.  And if the system purports to offer parents the right to choose which school they want (or need) their children to go to, it shouldn’t penalise them for exercising that right.

And the winner is …

Harriden Harperson, the fascist man-hating bitch of an Acting Leader, has finished her speech and some scary looking woman (it has to be a woman of course) has announced the winner of the deckchair rearranging competition on the SS New Liebour and the winner, with xx% of the vote, is …

Ed the Milibeast

Ed the Millibeast

Right, now the excitement’s all over I’m going to go and find some paint I can watch drying.

A Dilemma

A couple of months ago I achieved a small personal victory against Orange who finally admitted that their network is struggling and terminated my contract early.  They’ve since agreed to pay me a quite reasonable amount of compensation for unreasonably keeping me in contract when they knew they couldn’t provide me with the service I was paying for.

So I changed to Three for a number of reasons, foremost of which was the value for money and the superior coverage.  For £32 per month I get a free network unlocked HTC Desire, 500 minutes of any network calls, 1000 minutes of Three to Three calls, 1000 texts, 120 MMS messages and 1gb of data.  On the coverage front, I get Three’s network which provides relatively patchy coverage nationally (but fine in the places I frequent regularly) and roaming access to voice and data on Orange – the largest combined coverage of any UK mobile network.

I have been more than happy with Three right up until last Saturday when my phone would no longer connect to Three and was stuck on roaming.  I assumed it was a local problem and after a few hours called Three to confirm they were aware of the problem.  They said there was no problem, it must be the phone and I should turn it off and take out the sim card, leave it for a few minutes and try again.  I left it overnight to see if the problem went away by itself but it didn’t so I tried what I was advised to do and that failed to fix the problem.

So I called again and was told it must be my phone and that there is a known problem with the HTC Desire that can cause it to latch onto a roaming network and be reluctant to move back to the home network.  I was told to take my phone to a Three or Carphone Warehouse shop and get it flashed to the latest version of the software under warranty.  The phone had updated that morning so I knew it was up-to-date but I reluctantly agreed to do as they said.  But later that day I went to a relative’s house and as soon as I travelled away from home, the phone picked up Three again.  “Ah-ha”, I thought, “that proves it’s the network”.

So when I got home I checked #2 son’s phone which is also on Three and his had the same problem.  I manually scanned for networks and it would only pick up Three on 2G – scanning with the phone set to 3G wouldn’t pick up Three at all.  So it’s definitely the network, without a doubt and I phoned Three back up again.  The person I spoke to this time told me that the mast by my house had been decommissioned and that they were currently working on the next nearest to upgrade it to take up the slack from the decommissioned mast.  This would take a couple of days, he told me.

Being a naturally suspicious person, I decided to go to the Three shop in town and check it out the following day.  I went, they checked and confirmed that what I was told was correct.  Brilliant, it’s not my phone and I just need to sit tight for a few days and it’ll be sorted.  Except it isn’t sorted because my phone still roams onto Orange as soon as I turn into my street and it’s been a week.  I called Three today to find out if the upgrade had been finished on the other mast – yes it has and there are no problems with any of the masts in my area.  You know what’s coming next don’t you?  I did and I sighed.

The handset faults person asked me for my software versions again and told me that I didn’t have the latest version.  I disagreed.  So did he.  He told me it was my phone and I needed to get it flashed.  I told him it wasn’t my phone and explained all the above again and asked him if he genuinely thought that it was all a co-incidence and that two different models of phone had spontaneously developed the same fault which only manifests itself in my street and started when they turned off the mast near my house?  He said it could be.  Clearly it isn’t.  This is what I do for a job – I diagnose and fix application infrastructure faults for a multinational IT company.

The aforementioned handset faults person got his supervisor to phone me back and we went through it all again.  He didn’t try and blag me the like his colleague did though and agreed that it was Three’s fault.  He offered me a different handset or to terminate my contract without charge.  As I’ve already proven it’s not the handset with #2 son’s phone, the only option is to terminate the contract and go elsewhere.

But here’s the dilemma: my phone works in the house, it just can’t get a Three signal so it roams onto Orange.  If I’m on a call when I turn into the street it invariably cuts me off as it tries to keep the Three signal for as long as possible and ends up cutting me off because it’s too late to switch the call to Orange.  And I came off Orange for a reason – the network is overloaded and unreliable.  But I won’t get the deal I’ve got from Three if I go to another network – I won’t get the data, the free calls or the coverage.

Obviously Orange is out of the question so that leaves me with T-Mobile, O2 or Vodafone.  We’ve dabbled with T-Mobile and it was nothing special and then they built a new mast at the end of the road and the signal nosedived to the extent that it often wouldn’t work indoors.  So that leaves O2 or Vodafone.  Having worked for a mobile phone dealer, I know that Vodafone’s upgrades are shit – you have to spend quite a lot of money with them to get a decent upgrade when your contract is up so that leaves O2.  But O2 have overloaded their network with free data packages to the extent that their network in London was pretty much knocked out earlier this year for weeks.

So now you see my dilemma, what should I do?

Brookside’s Burning

Well, not quite but there was a fire a short time ago in a block of flats in the next street to me.

Seven police cars, two fire engines, a paramedic car and two ambulances – the most exciting thing to happen to Brookside since … a fortnight ago when serial arsonists were lighting fires around South Telford every day and the fire brigade was patrolling the estate every night.

Here are some pictures …

No restrictions on using the pictures for personal use, for non-personal use please ask.

Burn the Quran Day

A church in Florida plans to hold a “Burn the Quran Day” on September the 11th, despite universal condemnation both at home and abroad.

The church preaches that “Islam is of the devil”.

Back in 2005, the Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten, published cartoons depicting the muslim prophet, Mohammed.  The newspaper was threatened with bombings and the cartoonist received death threats.

The response from the “international community”?  Calls for moderation and criticism of the newspaper and cartoonist for offending muslims.

And in 2006, three boys were expelled from an Islamic school in Australia after they were caught pissing on bibles and burning bible pages.

The response from the “international community”?  Well I don’t remember seeing it on the news or in any newspapers over here.  There were no spontaneous protests from christians calling for the boys to be beheaded.  The boy’s father blamed the school.

Still in 2006, muslims protesting in London about the newspaper in Denmark publishing Mohammed cartoons waved placards calling the murder of people who insult Islam and other “anti-British slogans”.

The response from the “international community”?  Calls for moderation and criticism of the newspaper and cartoonist for offending muslims.

And a regular sight at any anti-American or anti-west protest by muslims, the burning of the Stars & Stripes:

The response from the “international community”?  I think you know the answer already.  The Stars & Stripes is second only to the bible in the list of revered objects in the USA but the “international community” seems to think it’s ok to desecrate it if you’re a muslim.

People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Brookside Health & Harmony

I’ve not long got back from stewarding a community event in Brookside, Telford called “Health & Harmony”.

I’m still none the wiser at where “Harmony” comes into it but the “Health” bit was covered off by the free fruit smoothies that were given out, the healthy eating advice and the demonstrations by Telford Thai Boxing club.

The event was organised by Brookside Improvement Group, which I’m a member of.  As the officially recognised residents group for, it’s important to get feedback from as many residents as possible and this event was used as an opportunity to get some feedback from residents.  There were some excellent suggestions such as a community garden and improving playgrounds.  One of the best suggestions was simply putting a cigarette bin outside the shopping arcade so smokers have no excuse for dropping their cigarette butts on the floor outside – it’s cheap and has an immediate benefit.

Of particular benefit, I think, was getting feedback from the locals that congregate outside the shopping arcade drinking.  They don’t look particularly nice and they discourage some people from using the shops but what most people don’t realise is that they clean up around the shops and see off the younger drinkers that cause trouble.  Most of these people don’t have jobs and want something to do with their time – just like the local kids.  They want organised activities, something to do during the day other than sitting around drinking.

Most people were critical of the estate and for the same reasons – it looks old and tired, there’s too much rubbish around – the same criticisms you’ll hear about any 40 year old housing estate.  But most people also had something positive to say – the sense of community where they live, the greenery and one woman who had moved away for 15 years before coming back said “it felt like coming home”.

One of the main attractions was the Brookside’s Got Talent competition.  Two of my kids (the youngest two) did a dance they learnt at Telford Academy of Performing Arts and came in second place.  There was almost no talent contest after the person who promised to provide a karaoke machine let us down but luckily a local DJ stepped in at the last minute and gave a couple of hours of his time for the event.

Special thanks is also due to Tesco in Madeley and the Co-Op in Stirchley, both of which provided the ingredients for the smoothies and to the supermarket in Brookside that donated bottled water, tea, coffee, milk, sugar, squash and other essential supplies to the event.