Making it up

in the day for all the work, or in the night for the sleep. Not that I’m sleeping overly well, with too much to do during the day, and depressing articles in the guardian left right and centre. (No, I’m not linking to it, it was far too depressing.)

And where was Look and Read? That’s my plan for Fridays, education and entertainment all rolled in to one. Instead it was wall to wall Scooby doo, until I drew the line and turned it off. And why do my children refuse point blank to play in the garden? It was gloriously sunny, and they wouldn’t get dressed and wouldn’t go out.

And now I’m tired, and the weekend is looking depressingly packed with work and housework, with only tomorrow afternoon to look forward to.

Ah well, maybe some sleep will make it all look better.

homeschooled kid on Bones, Sky one, just now.

Well, OK, ex homeschooled kid corpse…

even if it was quite hard work while eating pasta!

Your cautiousness, appreciation of functionality, and imagination combine to make you a THINKER.

Your awareness of those around you, along with your nuanced perceptions of the world at large, makes you the GENEROUS person that you are.

Not pasting the rest of it here, it is hugely long. Fun though.

Columnists - Yorkshire Post Today: News, Sport, Jobs, Property, Cars, Entertainments & More: LB2
By Colin Cramphorn
Colin Cramphorn is the Association of Chief Police Officers’ portfolio holder for Constitutional Affairs and the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire.

QUIETLY, and without serious debate, a revolution is taking place around the future of policing in England and Wales.
While one element of this revolution %u2013 restructuring %u2013 has belatedly attracted some attention, little if any scrutiny has been made of its more fundamental elements.
Who has any knowledge, for example, of the contents of the Police and Justice Bill or the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill?

We know about it don’t we? And our mps know that we know. I just don’t know how we let the media know that we know and we care.

Technorati Tags:legislative and regulatory reform bill, save parliament

the children are outside (in the rain!) and refusing to come in

This feels good. I went outside for a bit, and released my fruit trees from their captivity - not sure that being kept in plastic bags in the garage has been good for them, and not sure that the contrived new homes for them are going to be much better - must find much bigger pots very soon! I enjoyed being outside, I always forget how much I enjoy it given how much effort it is to find clothes that two picky children will accept for outdoor wear, coordinating all the effort and so on and so forth.

And now Big is in meltdown, having been unable to wait sensibly at the door while I dealt with Small’s filthy wellies, so the afternoon is not shaping up to end well. Oh well, nearly bedtime. Tomorrow it will be 6 o’clock at this time

I’ve just spent nearly an hour and half on the phone to various ppl, attempting to arrange my car insurance renewal (due today :oops:)

I’ve had 4 quotes, 3 of them with the same actual insurance company, but via three different brokers???, and I’ve finally gone with someone that some guy my original insurance company passed me to, passed me to. Confused? Not nearly as much as I am tbh.

How does this all work? There is one insurance company underneath all this, and somehow they are charging enough to be able to offer different discounts to 3 different brokers to give me three different quotes for one product. I’m only going to buy one insurance policy - why do I need so much non-choice?

So that has been our morning - before I started I offered the children the choice to go to the library, and if they’d said yes, I’d have just renewed with the AA and had done with it, and tbh, probably been just as happy. But they didn’t want to go, they wanted to watch Inspector Gadget 2 [2003] so that’s what they are doing. No accounting for taste

And now, despite the fact that all I really want to do is go back to bed, I’m going to go and be domestic in the kitchen. And the bathroom. And possibly one or two other rooms. I really don’t feel terribly well though.

Normal service does not exist.

First email bulletin - if you haven’t signed up over there, please do.

***
Hi everyone,

First of all, we’d like to say thank you for signing up, and welcome to the Save Parliament campaign!

This is the first email bulletin we’ve sent out. We’ll be sending more as things happen, so you can expect to be contacted on a fairly regular basis in the coming weeks.

The third reading of the Bill (the last vote in the Commons) will be sometime after Easter; it’s not been decided exactly when, but it looks like we’ve only got a few weeks at the most before the Commons vote themselves out of existence.

Representations to the Cabinet Office
————————————-

From spyblog

On Tuesday, in the House of Commons, Jim Murphy said that he’d only had 50 representations made to him about the Bill, with no mention of whether they were for or against it.

They work for you

50 doesn’t seem very many to us, considering the widespread opposition to the Bill. Many more people have written to their MPs about the Bill through the Save Parliament website, and we have had LOTS more than 50 people sign up for the campaign in just three days.

So, we reckon it’s time to show Jim Murphy the true scale of the opposition to his plans. We’d like to ask
you to contact the Cabinet Office and voice your concerns. Keep it polite; abusive emails or letters will only hurt our cause.

Mr. Murphy’s address is:

Jim Murphy MP
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State
Cabinet Office
70 Whitehall
London SW1A 2AS

Spy Blog says that his cabinet office email address should be:

jim.murphy@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk

Alternatively, you could send your emails to his standard MP address, which is:

jimmurphymp@parliament.uk

There are many more contact details on his website

There are also general contact details for the Cabinet Office

Media contacts
————–

We’re trying to raise the profile of this Bill in the media; if you could help us with this in any way, please let us know. Alternatively, if you know anyone who could help, please send them the website details and ask them to contact us if they are interested.

Raising awareness
—————–

We will only beat this Bill by raising public awareness, so we’d also like to ask you all to keep sending the website to your friends, family, colleagues, in fact anyone and everyone. The more people that know about the Bill, the better chance we have of stopping it.

Latest Links
————

The LRRB made the front page of Slashdot this morning

Also, the BBC Radio 4 programme “Law in Action” had a piece on Tuesday afternoon (it starts around 20 minutes in)

Murky has set up a LRRB-related blog aggregator on Squidoo, which will show you the latest news from across the anti-LRRB blogging community

***
edited to add - I know many of you have already written to your mps. What’s another letter to another bloke? Five minutes to save democracy - make it into a home education opportunity! Anyone any good at press releases, or have any journalists in the family? Any children in the bbc press pack want to do a report for there?

Technorati Tags:legislative and regulatory reform bill, save parliament

but I think what I really want to do is go to bed.

So a very quick highlights list:

Small has a friend all of his own from nursery. He talks about J, and J talks about him. It’s cute.

Big has taken to weaving on her hat loom like she’s been doing it for ever. She took it to school to show off and A was amazed, having been looking for something along those lines. I’ll be passing the contact details on - I’ll write more about the looms and where I got them from in a day or so.

I’m doing a lot of pondering, on a lot of topics. The sunshine is helping. Still cold though, isn’t it?

Thank you for writing to David Cameron - I’m replying on his behalf. I’m so sorry for the long delay in my reply, as I am sure you can appreciate there has been a massive increase in the volume of correspondence coming into the office since David Cameron took over as leader.

The Government claims that the Bill is designed to reduce regulation, red tape and bureaucracy. We believe that we would all support this aspiration, but unfortunately the Bill fails to deliver. There is no reference in it to deregulation. Instead, a wide power is granted to Ministers to amend, repeal or introduce new law, using a fast track Order making power. It extends the powers available to Ministers, whilst relaxing the constraints of Parliamentary scrutiny.

Conservatives have been dominant in the debates in Parliament about this Bill. Oliver Heald MP, Shadow Constitutional Affairs Secretary, has called for clear safeguards, so that the Bill concentrates on deregulation and only allows Ministers to use the powers in the Bill for non-controversial changes. Mr Heald has described the Bill as “a major move away from primary legislation towards Government by Ministerial edict”. That is why our Team has put forward dozens of amendments to the Bill and argued strongly for their inclusion.

I believe the Bill must be amended to provide the necessary safeguards. Firstly, order-making powers should only be used for specifically deregulatory purposes. Secondly, the powers should not be used to push through important or controversial changes, particularly those with constitutional implications. Finally, it is important that a procedure whereby Committees or either House of Parliament can veto an order is built into the legislation

Following concerted pressure from Oliver Heald in Committee, the Government has agreed to amend the Bill to write in a clear veto for the Regulatory Reform Committee over any order. This was described by the Minister in charge of the Bill, Jim Murphy MP, as a “great concession”, and certainly goes some way towards allaying my concerns. Unless further safeguards are built in, the Bill would have profound implications for democracy and would be a move towards government by Ministerial fiat.

I can assure you that we are continuing to work hard to ensure that the necessary safeguards are built into the Bill and that Parliament is not sidelined. Oliver Heald has tabled several new amendments to the Bill and will be pressing for their inclusion when it is next debated.

Thank you for taking the trouble to write on this very important subject

Yours sincerely,

David Beal

Why do I just feel like I’ve been comprehensively patronised? I didn’t add the capitalisation, it came like that. I also feel like I’ve been invited to be part of some strange cheerleading audience - applause cards held up each time Oliver Heald MP (cheering) is mentioned. And I don’t feel like handing a veto to a small committee is an improvement over having legislation scrutinised by parliament - it may be a great concession, but it isn’t anywhere near enough. There are never any deals done in corridors or committees after all, are there?

I much preferred the libdem response, (did I blog it?) which didn’t seem somehow to be quite so arrogant or testosterone laden. Perhaps it was the part where they suggested what we, the people, could do for ourselves.

Yet to hear back from Natascha Engel on this subject though.

Welcome.

Went to visit beans on Friday night - arrived very late, partially due to tights traumas, partially due to Small wanting to walk rather than ride in the car!, and partly because I’m just incompetent.

Was good to see them all.

Had to leave about 4 on Sat to go on to next part of itinerary, arrived early. (Applause please!)

Sunday (today, yes) was Tim’s father’s 80th birthday, which was the motivation for the trip this weekend. So family lunch. Was good, and children were wonderfully well behaved, which is also nice.

And then had to drive home. Far too much driving this weekend.

Have pottered doing bits of work this evening, am now going to bed and hoping Small doesn’t repeat activities of last night where he screamed on and off for four hours. Still feel rather tired after that.

Poets Against War-Letter to Laura Bush from Poet Sharon Olds

Simply calm and eloquent.

Our MP’s most recent speech in parliament:

“Oh!”

I have been thinking of getting a personalised number plate, TAN 1 is available for a breathtaking £36795 or TM 8 for £30795, but the news this week suggests to me that I could be missing a trick and there might be better ‘personalisation’ purchases available. So I wrote to my MP.

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

Natascha Engel MP
North East Derbyshire

Thursday 16 March 2006

Dear Natascha Engel,

I have been following the news with interest over the last week, in particular the disclosure that anyone who lends a million pounds to the Labour Party gets a peerage in return from the Leader.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a million pounds to lend the Leader, but if you could let me have a copy of the tariff, perhaps I could chose some honour more suited to my budget.

I would be grateful if you could get back to me quickly on this, as it would be nice to have the deal done before the the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill becomes law and your Leader abolishes parliament.

Yours sincerely,

Tim (surname removed from blog)

BBC NEWS | England | Merseyside | Mother’s truancy conviction wrong

“Every lesson counts for pupils during their education and the law says it is the responsibility of parents to ensure they attend,” a spokesman said.

So they will be offering catch up days to anyone who ends up with a substitute teacher, or gets sent home because of a heating problem, or where the school is closed due to sickness throughout the school?

They don’t half talk a load of rubbish these spokesppl.

You’ve got to pop over to a paper to see.

So votes on what I should choose as a prize?

Sorry

Which rather derailed my plans for the evening. Terrible drive to work today, nearly an hour to travel 12 miles on the M1, presaging a rather frustrating work day, but at least a reasonable drive home. I’d gone out at lunchtime to get stamps for Big to pursue her latest interest of entering competitions, and that’s what I’d intended to do with her. Instead Tim sat and helped, while I cleaned the bath. Again.

She wrote out the best part of two entries, for two competitions that she’d worked out the answers to herself yesterday. She must have spent the best part of three hours on that magazine yesterday - pouring over wordsearches, looking for answers to questions, doing a spot the picture. Small likes his as well, but hasn’t got quite that attention span

Which makes me think actually - can we take a quick poll? Answers in the comment box please. For those of you’ve who’ve been privileged to see it, what age is the The Roly Mo Show aimed at? Only I would have assumed it was toddlers, but this magazine has got letters to write over, first words to read, competitions to enter by writing a word starting with a letter you’ve got to find and cut out…just all seemed a bit OTT. Although it would appear Small can count. 1, 2, 3, 1 it goes

So that was our evening, by far the highlight of my day. Now must go and get organised for tomorrow - determined to get away in good time so as to be able to pick them up before they’ve done 10 hours in nursery

You Should Drive a Ford Shelby Mustang Cobra

You have an extreme need for speed, even when you’re not in a hurry. And while your flying by, you don’t want to look like every other car on the road!

Now, I felt cheated. The range of available speeds in the questions only went up to 130.

said Tim, appearing in the doorway quite literally dripping wet.

“Daddy, its snowing. Daddy, my slide’s got snow on it. Daddy, my seesaw, it’s …” …….. (yes, you guessed, snow). Small likes snow.