In financial hard times, a means of reducing expenditure and charity is to be more discriminating in your provision. The trick is to make the case: either resorting to demonising a sub group, or making the case that too many will suffer with over stretched resources. The last that you do not have responsibility for them.

So we turn to Oxford where “homeless tourists” are attracted to the beauty and splendour of the city. Help will be offered to those with a personal link to the city; others will be given a one way single train ticket out save if they would face violence on their return.

My first instinct is to be alarmed where rights are diminshed for any group, and I will know the cause that takes their rights away for fear that my rights may too be taken, and that my rights are worth less when the rights of my fellow citizens are diminished.

Those without property or fixed abode may be ordered out of a city. Shall we deem that a local authority has an arbitray power to exile people from their boundaries because their personal history is not linked to the town?

By this logic local authorities can evict “home tourists” who buy holiday property, denying locals accommodation and increasing the price of housing. Residents without personal links to the city could be asked to leave.

The right to live where you will are not dependent on your ability to own property. Oxford are stating that homless citizens have less rights then the population because of this, and that being local has a quasi privledge for a citizen.

That idea needs challenging – the rights of people are not subject to local considerations. The birthright of a citizen is to live and reside where he can. Being homeless is not a crime that makes these rights less; it is a national scandel that any response is anything less than solving this social problem, but to say here is your fare, on your way.

Nationally we need to tackle the issue of homlessness. We have a civic responsibilty not to condone our citizens living in cardboard boxes. A moral responsibility not to send them on their way.

Down the pub waiting for a free BBQ before heading off to the Skeptics Social at another pub, the Swan and Rushes in Leicester.

It could be the second pint of Boddingtons but I thought I saw AC Grayling in the pub a few minutes ago. This may well be a good time to grab some food.

One comment on my last blog mentioned that belief in god was not rational. While I sympathize, to be honest I have moved on. Like Sam Harris I really think there is a more important conversation that can leave religion, like the Republican Party, out in the cold.

So I am resolved to write a little less, save where there is a big story. The last blog was in some ways a fair well to arms in poking faith.

At all times I hope it has been clear it is the idea and not the person that I will counter. If only because that road is one I have travelled on this journey of life.

Below is Jamie the chef at Time doing the BBQ on a cold December evening.

Class has a pull on heart strings, and political labels which to the unaccustomed  may seem quaint. While in America everyone is middle class, the closest politicians in Britain come to saying that is Middle England. Even then, it is talking about values that supposedly belong to middle class people – holidays abroad, rising house prices, concerned with status in a community and conservative values of society. The opposite view is Big Britain which is more socially engaging, sees money as not a measure of success, and doubts anything they are told from media sources where new ideas are seen as important. One looking forward with new ideas, the other wanting to recapture a bygone era that was better with traditional means.

The middle and working class distinction is still there, though more a cultural one then an attitude save for those political warriors of another time. John Prescott – deputy leader of the Labour Party during Tony Blair’s Premiership and the man thought to have brought the trade unions on side with the Blairite project – has a new series called “Prescott – The Class System and Me“.  While this may take us on a whimsically philosophical view of class attitudes and culture (a chippy will be included) that distinction can be shown with Jamie Oliver trying to change attitudes to food. Food is culture, and even though Jamie Oliver is advocating healthy eating at budget type prices the difference that seems clear is education – at least the ability to actually use a pan rather than a microwave.

The ability to do well in education and get a high paid job is a key factor. Prescott failed his eleven plus and had jobs as a waiter and sailor before joining the trade union movement and becoming an MP. What you lack academically can be overcome by sheer bloody hard work and self improvement. The uphill battle Jamie Oliver is having on working class mothers – tired from unsocial hour jobs, not spending quality time with their children, and no cookery or nutritional savvy at all – is seen by some as an attack on class culture.

Yet cultural life style attitudes have an impact. How much education you have, how long you live, how healthy you are. It then impacts on your children too. The cycle can be broken of course; but overcoming ignorance and aspiring to try something different is not always something people want. Culture has become territorial and the grub you eat regarded as a status symbol of where you come from. Leaving you unable to concentrate at school, and later health problems.

Where you come from, your roots can be important. In my case, the first person from my family to go to University. As a manager the only time I have done any physical work was volunteering with a conservation group pulling up Rhododendron bushes. I had backache for three days, and regular hot baths.  When I see one blossoming in a garden it’s beauty is diminished as I think of them as the weeds they were in the forest where they strangled the life out of trees. My voice developed mixing with middle class people at church, and a conscious mimicking of BBC news readers. It helped having a political correspondent as a name sake. If that is the reason for my interest in politics and current events then what would have happened to me as a child watching him on Strictly Come Dancing I have no idea.

The key to your future

My brief period of unemployment has come to an end. The credit crunch resulted in my taking voluntary redundancy. Now I am working for an international bank that sees itself as the local bank. Hopefully not a case of out of the pan and into the fire in these financial stormy times. The fact that there is a two year wait on a car parking space amounts to job security at these times.

So working again. Which seeing as the claimant count for job seekers will be two million by Christmas is not something I take lightly. The whole class distinction has to be put to one side when we look at what allows people to achieve high incomes and healthy life styles. Good education, high paying jobs, social hours.

In a recession, where graduates work at Starbucks because there are no other jobs available and they are closing down as people rein in their spending that matters more then ever. Lack of opportunity gives way to lack of aspiration. The drive to succeed, for personal enrichment through education, and learning the life skills to get ahead in life are important. Denying people the opportunity to make use of that hard work is one that we cannot afford to squander with social immobility and lack of access to education.

Those distinctions of working and middle class need to disappear. Education and aspiration, with equal access to opportunity are the words that need action to mobilise people to become more than their roots statistically ever suggested they could be. We need a society which works for people by rewarding the contribution people make to it, rather than putting obstacles in the way.

OTHER BLOGS:

Don’t want to be a statistic on a Government Chart

Usually travelling from Cornwall to the Midlands will require three changes, and take 7 hours. However this Sunday there will be engineering works and there is only one service out of here. Which according to the website would be:

What you may use with a train ticket in the UK

Seven changes, 11 hours, and three buses. On a train ticket. I am wondering if for the sheer hell of it I should do it.

When it comes to planning your life the moral of the story is do not rely on public transport. Visiting these shores plan ahead, and beware when using the trains especially at the weekend.

Carol Anne Duffy

Knife crime  – yes it is an issue. Poetry though usually inspires people to be romantic or at least mutilate the English language for the sake of rhyming schemes. Some teachers however fear the emotional imagery that Carol Ann Duffy invokes in her poem Education for Leisure to the point of ripping it out of text books. The themes are familiar to anyone who has wondered that the only power that counts is that over life and death, that there are times when genocidal tendencies are fantasised about. After teacher complaints, the AQA exam board in Britain has withdrawn her poem, that reads:

Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.

I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.
We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in
another language and now the fly is in another language.
I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.

I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half
the chance. But today I am going to change the world.
Something’s world. The cat avoids me. The cat
knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.
I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.
Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town
for signing on. They don’t appreciate my autograph.

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio
and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar.
He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

Is this kill joys, who need to control the supposedly impressionable who think it may be cool to live like the person in the poem by preventing kids from ever knowing this well written poem? The poem is about education being the alternative to empowering you – rather than feeling like god killing a goldfish. That there is a false sense of celebrity in people thinking their being alive makes them worthy of the accolade.

For these reasons this poem is a popular one with children – because they can identify with the themes because they are so transparent, with the depth of the imagery inviting to be explored by eager minds. They identify with the rebel that finds the language of Shakespeare difficult, how the underclass are not appreciated, the desire to be noticed and recognized for who they are without needing to draw extra attention to get it.

What the teachers, and the exam board are not doing is protecting children. They are denying a poem that may connect to a child and inspire them to the beauty of the English language and poetry. To think that this poem will cause a child to enact violence, is to suggest that we should hide children from all art, all writing, all media and all human conversation. This poem could be the way to unlocking the frustrations and anger that children have.

Michael Rosen, the children’s laureate, said: “By this same logic we would be banning Romeo and Juliet. That’s about a group of sexually attractive males strutting round the streets, getting off with girls and stabbing each other.

“Carol Ann is an easy target because she’s a modern poet.” He added: “Of course we want children to be talking about knife crime and poems like these are a terrific way of helping that happen. Blanket condemnation and censorship of something never works.”

The AQA spokeswoman said: “The decision to withdraw the poem was not taken lightly and only after due consideration of the issues involved. We believe the decision underlines the often difficult balance that exists between encouraging and facilitating young people to think critically about difficult but important topics and the need to do this in a way which is sensitive to social issues and public concern.”

Sensitive to the charge that a kid in a class that has covered the poem may knife someone. Not that correlation means causation. Sometimes I really fear that there are people who want to improve things by killing our enjoyment of life, and the celebration of human talent. Parents – demand that fine works of literature are part of your child’s education and that they cover this issue. A frustrated education is something to be avoided.

A cynical person may think this is about preventing Carol Anne Duffy becoming the next Poet Laureate. Though her considerable talent may be enough to prevent that.

Quote taken from here.

Wonder how long before the case of John Delaney is used for a compulsory ID scheme, or DNA bank on all people in the UK. That someone could go missing, police mistakenly find a dead body they identify as the missing person, then he turns up years later on TV – alive but with total amnesia under the name ”David Harrison”.

If his son had not been watching the TV appeal at the time, he may still be under the delusion that he had cremated his Dad five years ago.

So the question remains – who is the dead person and why the cock up?

From BBC News.

Page last updated at 13:02 GMT, Thursday, 4 September 2008 14:02 UK E-mail this to a friend Printable version

‘Cremated’ father turns up on TV

A man has been reunited with his father after spotting him on television – five years after he thought he was cremated. John Renehan’s father John Delaney went missing in 2000 and when a decomposed body matching his description was found in 2003 he was identified by a coroner. But it has emerged that Mr Delaney, 71, of Oldham, had actually been put in a care home after being found wandering around the town with memory loss. Police admitted “mistakes were made” in the identification process. When Mr Delaney was found in 2000 in a confused state in Copsterhill Road he was unable to give any clues about his identity. He was given the name “David Harrison” and placed in the care home where he stayed for eight years. Positive identification His family reported him as missing but appeals failed to uncover information about his whereabouts. The body of a man, which had similar clothes and historic wounds to Mr Delaney, was found in the grounds of Manchester Royal Infirmary in January 2003. It was identified as Mr Delaney and a funeral was held. More than five years after the cremation service, Mr Renehan, from Didsbury, saw a television appeal about finding the family of the man in the care home, who he recognised as his father. Asked how he felt when he saw him on the BBC Missing Live programme, Mr Renehan said: “I knew straight away that was my dad.” The 42-year-old rang the programme after the episode in April. He added: “I think they thought I was some nutcase. That’s when I told them I thought I buried my father in 2003.” I’ve been bringing pictures in, trying to bring his memory back and things are starting to click John Renehan Mr Renehan then contacted the police, who asked him a series of questions before DNA tests confirmed their relationship. “I must admit I’m not happy about the whole scenario. Somebody has got to take responsibility for their actions.” Mr Renehan said his father is suffering from total amnesia, but he is now spending time with him to try and rebuild their relationship. “I’ve been bringing pictures in, trying to bring his memory back and things are starting to click. “But also the thing that keeps popping up into my mind is this other person who I cremated. We’re still waiting for answers really.” Investigation under way In a statement, Greater Manchester Police said the identification mix-up was a matter for the coroner, who is no longer in the post. But the force said there was no suspicious circumstances surrounding the discovery and that DNA testing was not routinely used at that time. A spokesperson said: “Greater Manchester Police accepts that mistakes were made and that Mr Delaney’s family has been through a traumatic ordeal.” It said that inquiries in 2003 to establish the unknown man’s identity were “not sufficient”. “At that time, only paper records of people reported missing from home existed,” the spokesperson added. “Today, Greater Manchester Police has advanced systems in place to ensure that mistakes of this nature are not made and robust checks are made to establish the identity of people who cannot immediately confirm who they are.” The spokesperson said the officer who dealt with the case in 2000 had since retired from the force. An investigation is under way to try to establish the identity of the man cremated in 2003.

The above mentioned webcam can be found here. It is all about putting the fun into the Orwellian Society; you control the camera when it is your turn though you can see the webcam while operated by others. On a few occasions went to Exmouth beach to relax while an undergraduate at Exeter.

Originally started to keep a watchful eye on a homeless person sleeping in a bus shelter. Nowadays it used by people to wave to people online. Although someone in Australia witnessed a burglary and alerted the police in England.

Exmouth seafront by night

Exmouth dunes - more photos by clicking this one