My usual preference is for the Guardian style guide, probably because I’m a pinko liberal – but also because it’s free online, and I can’t bring myself to pay £11 for a book I really know I will never use.

Well now Yahoo! have a style guide – and it’s all about writing for the web – yes it has the list of words but it also has some actually quite helpful stuff about how to make web copy readable… you can even buy it as a actual book maybe I should stop this ramble and go read it.

But if I don’t, then I’m standing by and letting liars and bullies have the last word about what happened to the poor child, and I’m letting them tar me with their slanderous, defamatory brush, and I’m letting them abuse her memory almost as badly as her body was abused in life. Insult added to injury, when injury was horriffic enough.

You need to know that Khyra Ishaq was not home educated. Many news articles have implied that she was, over the last nine months or so, though I am relieved to note that most of them have dropped that angle, when it became apparent that she wasn’t. The BBC, however, are still touting the line of the Labour machine, that she was home educated, that there was nothing the authorities could do, that the only thing that could have saved her was the introduction of the faltering legislation that has this week been signed off by the Commons, and moved on to the Lords.

Guess what, folks? It isn’t true. So much of it isn’t true, it’s difficult to know where to start, but let’s start with “Was Khyra home educated?”

When a child is registered to a school, and the parents wish to end that arrangement, there is a set procedure. It is laid down in law, it is neither difficult nor complicated, but it is necessary. The parents must write to the school, stating clearly that the child is to be taken off the roll, since s/he will, from that point forward, be recieving their education at home.

It has to be a letter. It doesn’t have to be recorded delivery, though some would recommend that it should be, as protection from accusations of truancy amid claims that letter did not arrive. It just has to be a letter, and it has to be sent to the school.

On receipt of the letter, the head has a legal responsibility to notify the local authority. What the LA choose to do with the information does vary from area to area, but generally speaking, parents are likely to hear from them within a few weeks, with a request for some reassurance that education is taking place.

As far as I can gather, from the various things I have read, including this FOI request, that letter was not sent. But guess what? The local authority didn’t know their own legal procedures, and deregistered her anyway. The school, at one point, had a telephone conversation in which the parents told them of their intention to home educate, but that does not make for a deregistration. The local authority, later, recieved a letter of deregistration, but the local authority CAN’T deregister a child – only the school can. They all muddled their own procedures, and behaved as if she were home educated, but she was not.

For months and months, Khyra was, or should have been, on the roll of her school, but was not attending. She hadn’t gone anywhere, they knew where she was. Teaching staff went to her house to try and see her, but failed. The school, who were actually very worried about her, reported her to social services, who by all accounts, went to the house once, got no answer, and never tried again. The neighbours knew that odd things were going on, including leaving Khyra outside in winter in her underwear, but did not see fit to play the merry hell with social services that really should have been played.

That child was let down – not so much by the school, though some training issues appear to have arisen there, too, but certainly by social services, by her community, and most importantly, BY HER PARENTS.

Guess what, folks? It was her mother, and her mother’s boyfriend, who killed her. Nobody else. It was them. They did it. Nobody stopped them, and plenty of people could have at least tried, but ultimately, their contribution would not have been required if those two people had fulfilled their legal and moral obligation to feed her. To FEED HER, for crying out loud! The blame lies with them.

Where the blame does not lie, is with me. Khyra had a whole community around her, and that community failed to save her. Her father failed to save her. I, however, am not a part of that community. I did not know Khyra. I wasn’t there. There was nothing I could do. It is not my fault.

The thing is, even if Khyra HAD been home educated, and it’s perfectly possible, given a slightly more robust investigation of the procedure by her parents, and even if Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill had been enacted into law, SHE WOULD STILL HAVE DIED. Schedule 1 allows for two days a year spent with the family – less, by the time travelling time, report writing, and so on, are factored in – and Khyra was starved in five months. Schedule 1 of the CSF Bill is about giving local authorities carte blanche to arbitrarily reject the provision that home educators are making for their children’s learning, on the basis of a wide range of equally spurious reasons. It is about taking responsibility for the education of children away from parents, and handing it to bureaucracies. It is about, incidentally, setting the legal precedent for YOU, oh school-using friends who think this doesn’t affect you, to be unable to choose the school that is right for your child, that fits your belief system, or even that accepts your cheques.

Being enrolled at school did not save Khyra. Being a long-term truant certainly didn’t save her, since no-one quite noticed. Serving up the education of my children on a platter, in the wake of an unjustified, unsubstantiated, just plain incorrect moral panic over children being “seen” certainly wouldn’t have saved her. It won’t save anyone.

BBC News – Public sector ‘still expects raises despite recession’

Most public sector workers are still expecting a pay rise in 2010, despite the impending clampdown on earnings in the sector, a survey has found.

I am truely confused by this article. If you read it; it says public sector workers expect 2% pay rise – and private sector expect 3%. Then it goes on to suggest public sector workers are out of touch with reality?

“according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development survey, most public sector workers still expect a pay rise of 2% in 2010.

Workers in private firms predicted that their pay will rise by 3% next year.”

and

“Public sector workers are clearly not sensing that the pay storm clouds are gathering. It looks like 2010 will prove to be the last hurrah of this gilded age.”

Now I’m not suggesting anything about pay rises here – but just reading the article I can’t see it has this bias?

The only other stat in the article – is 20% of Public Sector workers don’t expect a pay rise while 25% of private don’t – so are they using that as the stat to beat up the public sector with? because the other stat suggests it’s the other way?

In reality does this research conclude that their is very little difference between people in these sectors but we need to publicise our story?

like with most news stories of this type I can’t get to the real numbers yet because the Beeb obviously have the report before the company that did it have bothered to put anything on their own website – at this point I could go on a rant about marketing and news releases – but I’ll save that.

Did you know KITT was convertible?!

Kevin just read this article to me (almost word for word, since he was enjoying it so much), and I have one thing to say to Charlie Brooker – frankly, I’d have said it on the website, if they’d put comments on the article, but they didn’t, so I’m doing the second-best thing. I’m commenting on a little-known blog in a hidden corner of the internet where Mr Brooker will never venture.

The thing is, Charlie – may I call you Charlie? I read your column in the Grauniad, and I even watch your BBC4 TV show, when I remember – the thing is, that Michael Knight, a lone crusader in the dangerous world of a man who does not exist, he was my first love. I accept that David Hasselhoff has turned out, over the years, to be a bit of a nutter, but the fact remains that that Knight Rider stole my heart when I was seven, and there is nothing on this earth that you can do or say to change that.

When did numbers too big to write in digits become chicken feed? Some time after the news started talking in trillions, I suppose.

Of course we’ve moved on from buggies, and are fully signed up baby waring hippies, but when we we’re new to it all yes even we had a pram- but in a sign of how great we are as parents it was a rear facing one – so that explains why Daisy never stops talking.

We still have it too – we where never sure if there might come a time when Henry would use it, but he never has. Maybe now is the time to sell it on ebay?

it's doomed

If you’ve been following the blog, you might have noticed, that I’ve started to pay attention as to how the world economy actually works, and it’s scared me a bit. It’s not because we personally are in trouble, or if we are we haven’t noticed; after all we’ve just gone a bought a car. it’s because once you see any of this information you can’t but fail to see how the global economy appears to be built on a fundamentally flawed ideal, that we will never run out of stuff.

Well today I’ve fulled my paranoia even more, I’ve been reading New Scientist, and their special report on how our economy is killing the earth. so of the articles are available on line, but it you’ve got access to it, I recommend you read the New Scientist this week. 

for those of you with no time/inclination/regard for the fate of the world, here is my summary. 

“we’re doomed”

and here’s my more detailed, thoughts;

We’re all doomed, because the way the entire planet works is based on the fact we are never expecting to run out of resources. Just to make that clear, when we run out of oil, or fish, or water, or coal – the free market will collapse, because it’s all driven by the fact that it needs to grow to feed itself. 

stop the economy - buy this!

Saving the planet while the economy is like it is, is a waste of time, because we need to reduce our carbon emissions world wide by a factor of 5 by 2050.. if you neglect the effect of a growth based economy, if the economy meats it’s target growths over the next 25 years then we need to reduce carbon emissions to 0.2% of the current levels. in short we need to make the economy sustainable, or we can’t save the planet. ¹

some of the ideas to solve these problems are a bit Utopian, but we do need to do something, persuading people to forgo material riches, and start placing values on society isn’t going to be an easy thing. I’m not even sure there are any real individual things you can do today (short of starting a revolution) to change this. everyone in any position of power has so much vested in the system they’re not going to change easily.

so I’m all depressed now. I’m considering my options

1. move to a croft in Scotland, and stock up
2. start a political party and overthrow the world
3. moan about it for a bit, then bury my head in the sand, hope if goes away

¹http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg20026786.100-special-report-why-politicians-dare-not-limit-economic-growth.html

So we are currently here:

1. in the UK there is only about £20bn of cash in circulation, that’s actual notes and coins. 
2. the bank of England only has 400 tonnes of gold – in today’s market that’s £6.6bn – selling that much gold would be done by auction and probably sell for less.
3. UK National (i.e government) debt is currently £650bn
4. personal debt in the UK is £1,448bn (1.4trillion) – £232bn of that is unsecured debt [credit action]
5. in the UK we pay £259m in interest each day.
6. The housing stock in the UK is currently worth around £4trillion

What does interest me, is looking at who is playing Old Man Potter.

If you haven’t seen It’s a Wonderful Life go watch it now, I’ll wait; Old Man Potter is a local businessman who is motivated by money and a desire to run Bedford Falls. When there is a run on the bank, and on the Buildings and Loan Company, it’s Old Man Potter who starts buying while everyone else is selling, thus giving him huge sway over everything when it calms down.

The credit crunch is much like the run on the bank, and just like It’s a Wonderful Life, there are people selling while Mr Potter’s buying. At the moment I think it’s Barclays who are doing the best impression of Potter, buying just the nice bits of Lehman Brothers, and not making too much of a fuss about it. Lloyds (The Stupid Bank) are running a close second, merging with HBOS.

But as they are somewhat being forced into it by government- it isn’t quite as good.

I think when the dust settles, there will be a nice big Barclays while the rest pick over the scraps that not everyone is sure they want. Not that I understand economics, or think this is any way to run a planet, but it’s a bit interesting, for now.