I suppose it was inevitable, but the jumps household is rapidly turning into a house of Nerds.
Over the last few weeks Henry has mastered the levels of mouse control needed to operate the CBeebies Website unaided. Daisy is excitedly discovering the wonderful world of the CBBC Site, Horrible Histories is a particular favourite, and Ruth and I are fully paid up members of the Simultaneous laptop, TV/Radio club.
The only problem last week was we ran out of computers! Henry was on the PC upstairs, Daisy was on my laptop and Ruth was on hers, so I was computer-less.
I then spent far too long resurrecting the very old laptop with the dodgy power supply – which now much to my nerdy shame is running Ubuntu.
So yes we are terrible parents and there are times in our house when the house falls silent, as we all stare blankly into our individual screens; but you know what it’s quite nice.
“Not content!” shouted a handful of Peers in the House of Lords, and there it disappeared, like a mist in the sunlight. Clause 26 is no longer a part of the Children, Schools and Families Bill. Actually, by the end of the night, there’s going to be very little of the Bill left – a good three-quarters of it has been dropped, in the interests of getting anything at all through before Parliament dissolves at the end of the week.
Of course, it’s not really over. Ed Balls has stated, today, that he has every intention of being re-elected, and entirely recreating the Bill in the new Parliament, and there is a belief abroad that Something Must Be Done about home education, even amongst the politicians who have fought on our behalf against the proposals that have been killed off, tonight. This battle will have to be fought again. But I’m optimistic – even if Labour do get back in, the world will be a very different place on May 7th. Their majority, if they have one, will be tiny, and they won’t have a chance of railroading such controversial legislation through again. In addition, there is NO MONEY. Have you heard? We have no money. All the money’s gone. There is likely to be very little stomach in the other two parties for the spending of millions on a problem which has never been proven to exist. On the theoretical possibility of a problem which could one day arise, maybe.
But tonight, there is reason to celebrate, because, Ding Dong, the Wicked Bill is Dead!
It’s like a huge weight has been removed from my computer – or someone has given the hamster some performance enhancing drugs! after almost 6 months of dodgy internet Virgin Media have actually got around to fixing the problem in the local exchange and Me and 600 of my closest broadband neighbours can all use the internet again, without being thrust back into 1996.
It all started back in October when I began to suspect our wireless router of being pants / getting interference from the other 11 wireless networks you can see in our house. In hindsight it was just the beginning of the problems, it was so hard to diagnose because at the time it really depended on which way you held your face. I phoned virgin media, but because the wires where all in daisy’s room I never actually followed it through.
Now with super-slow-wet-string
When I did get to sorting that bit out routing all the wires into another room so I could call at night when it was broken – all ready with wireless and wires and laptops – the man on the phone said – oh yes its a known problem, have £5 – it was like I got a small prize for spotting there was something wrong and bothering to phone.
Then it got really bad – at the end of November beginning of December I got “super-slow-modem-broadband” installed in my house – the wet string was obviously drying out. So I went on a campaign of social media attack and twittered and forumed virgin until they basically admitted it was all broken and stopped charging me for broadband. but event that was in January*.
So since then I’ve been moaning to anyone who comes within 5 yards of me and mentions the internet -” my broadband is naff ” it’s a great shame because back before October I was a Virgin Media evangelist. I would have recommended it to anyone, the speed is always what it says it is, never slows down at night, always fast, no connection problems for well over 10 years.
Now? I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone – not because the product isn’t good – it is fast, it doesn’t slow down and it doesn’t cut out – when it works – it’s just if Virgin Media over sell their broadband in one area – you could loose your broadband for 1/2 the year! .
* moving for us was a pain – we have no BT line – and that takes 6-8 weeks, which is how long i was told the fix was going to be (to be fair it was from when they said that)
So we got a letter from Louise Ellman again this week:
“RE: A fair tax system for all
Thank you for your email regarding a new tax system.
I have made representations on your behalf to the Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I will contact you when I receive a response”
It’s very good of Louise to do this on our behalf, as we really can’t say we are in favour of an unfair tax system; that just doesn’t sound right. The fact that we’ve never contacted Louise about an unfair tax system makes her response a little strange, though.
Maybe, based on the meeting we had with her a few months back, where we talked about our strong desire for her to stop the legislation on unfair treatment of home educating families, she has surmised that we are against all forms of unfairness?
It looks very likely that our beloved MP’s filing system has gone a bit potty, which is not something you really want when you are 8 weeks out from an [supposed] election date.
Whilst it might be true that we are against unfairness, tax systems or not, I would much rather she made representations on our behalf about home education, rather than tax, at this time. I’m quite willing for her to make these representations to the Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP instead of Ed Balls, though. You never know, we might get a better response than we have in the past.
