Great quotations, ancient and modern.

“From the crooked timber of humanity nothing straight was ever made” - that was Kant.

“Men make history but not in circumstances of their choosing” - that was Marx.

"The best is the enemy of the good" - that was Voltaire.

“We will make this the best place in the world for children and [sic] young people to grow up” - that was Balls.

Christmas newsletter

Well it’s time for our annual update on life chez nous and we hope you’re all keeping well, so...

MERRY XMAS EVERYONE, or should I say “Merry X-FactorMas” ;-)!!!!! (And here are the football results: ITV Blockbusters 20 million, Yuletide Logs nil LOL!) I just can’t believe it’s all come around so fast, and with the Easter eggs in the shops already it’s Go Go Go all the way!!!!!

But seriously we love this time of year. The pitter-patter of tiny reindeer feet, turkey and all the trimmings and snow on the way (so they say!)! And who says no one goes to church anymore? Our new vicar is really throwing himself into the spirit of things and attendances are up, what with the nightly topless carol concerts under our new Jack Vettriano-inspired nativity ceiling: OK, it’s not the Sistine Chapel but we like it, and that’s good enough for us - and I’m sure it’s good enough for Jack too, which is even more important after his Desert Island Discs fiasco ;-D!! So what’s Santa bringing you then?

It’s been a funny old year. On the plus side, Charlotte’s pregnant again and it beats me how she does it quite frankly. More of a bummer is that I only went and got diagnosed as having Chlamydia, didn’t I? :-( Sometimes I really wonder what the world’s coming to: I mean, you can’t even trust your own kids these days ;-P. But that aside we mustn’t grumble and are soldiering on.

Despite slipping on ice and breaking his leg in two places at about the 14km mark, Barry came a very creditable fourth in the school marathon last week, narrowly missing out on a medal position and anyway the first three were all Kenyans, which I thought was a bit odd at the time but didn’t want to make a fuss. I don’t know where that boy gets it from!

Georgie is still on her travels before going to Uni. Doesn’t time fly: she’ll have been gone twelve years on 7th January but it doesn’t seem a day since she left! She reports that the bungee jumping Down Under is definately not to be missed (do they ever do anything else down there, I ask?! Sure as hell can’t play cricket ;-D – mind you, as you may have read in the papers, she and a friend were arrested for jumping off ... the Sydney Harbour Bridge no less! Georgie got fingered by the good cop (fnaaar fnaaar lol, I said “LOL”!!!) and got away with a suspended sentence but her mate was less fortunate and ... wait for it! ... went inside for a long stretch!LOYAL ORANGE LODGE!!!!!!

Back here on planet Earth, work’s looking up at last, which is the only direction you can look if you’re flat on the floor already ;-(. Still, “if you can keep your head while all around are losing theirs” and all that! Fortunately in these tough times I have a caring employer and we’ve all been told to make sure that we take regular breaks away from the computer so I recently started going home in the evenings, which lets me snatch a bit of time for family bonding and even some to write this to you all! Word has it that we’ll get even more time at home in the near future! What’s that? “More kids on the way?” you ask? You cheeky bugger: slap for that man please! Speaking of futures, I remember my Uncle Podger telling me again and again when I was a kid that the future was in banking, but did I listen??? Ho hum!

Can’t complain though: the house is looking a treat with the decorations up and blinking for all the world to see (SSHHHH!!: no planning permission – WHOOPS!!!:-0 and we’re all as snug as a bug in a rug and waiting for the snow!

Do leave the turkey on a low grill or whatever and pop in for some jingle bells and egg nog on Christmas morning! We’d love to catch up with you and yours LoL! Know what I mean? Well DO. YOU. KNOW. WHAT. I. MEAN??? lol LOL!!!!!

... etc. etc. etc.

It's madness gone politically correct!

I received this alert through my organisation's email system yesterday:

"Nursery workers ... are taking their mobile phones into Xxxxxx nursery .... This is currently illegal due to safeguarding [sic], and a recent case where a nursery worker was sent to jail for taking photos on their phone of the children."

(In the case mentioned a nursery worker was prosecuted for taking and distributing indecent images of some of the children in her care.)

By this logic, and leaving aside whether extreme cases make for good policy, which I touched on in my post of 6th August (On Contact Point and Abuse), no mobile phones containing cameras should be allowed in any public facility where any young people are present. Not only do we have a duty of care to them all and not just the very young ones, but most paedophiles don't suddenly see the error of their ways just because children reach the age of 5.

Nor should we allow chairs in such places, just in case a member of staff decides to bludgeon children about the head with one. Nor cuddly toys, which could easily be used to smother and suffocate any survivors.

Nor, indeed, should staff be allowed on the premises if they are considered potentially this dangerous even after lengthy and rigorous pre-employment checks.

My gentle enquiry as to the precise degree of lunacy being applied to the matter met with the standard response that we are only following the rules. This plea was insufficient at the Nuremburg tribunals but it looks like we have either moved on, or forgotten. Or just don't care.

Youth Work: what now?

Should there continue to be a discrete statutory youth service in Britain, and is it appropriate for the state to take the lead in what has always been seen as informal social education? This has been bothering me since long before the bankers did us all in and the new British coalition government came to power.

Youth work has always been vaguely defined, sometimes deliberately but too often sloppily so. However, I think there are two broad approaches to it that are worth looking at here. It's not about adopting either one or the other, but about the balance between them within youth work as a whole, and what kind of youth work should sit where in the mix. I don't have an answer, but I do know that we are trying to ride them both at the moment. It's not pretty to watch - or comfortable to do.

As I see them, these are the two approaches:

1. Youth work as informal social education under conditions of universally accessible and voluntary association in which young people decide where they want to go. Most youth workers would agree that this is the ideal. I've always thought that youth work is one of the very few mainstream state services that isn't dominated by remedial agendas but should by its very nature have people's positive development as its prime aim. So far as possible I've sought to preserve this ideal against what I suppose I shall have to call 'deficit models of youth' emanating from both Right and Left as well as from the massed ranks of post-political, candy-floss Stalinists who have long had their tree-hugging hands around the throat of public service in this country.

2. Youth work as harnessed to remedial agendas, employing informal education techniques to support ends considered socially desirable and stymie socially damaging behaviours. This requires a priori judgements about what we should be doing and the targeting of young people perceived to have problems or be at risk of them, but employs youth work methods to attain the desired ends. This is the more utilitarian view and compromises many of the principles youth workers hold dear. Nonetheless, from drug and alcohol work to sex education and even the current therapeutic obsession with correcting low self-esteem (don't get me started!), this is in fact what youth workers spend a lot of time doing already.

If the balance is to favour the first model - that is, openly accessed developmental work - why should the state deliver it at all? Does youth work really fit there? Wouldn’t it be better to restore the responsibility for informal social education to the formal and informal institutions of civil society? The state is compelled to formalise the informal and tacit, is dominated by written procedures from which it scared to depart for fear of prosecution, is necessarily prescriptive and is subject to ideological, discursive and party-political agendas. Its institutions are cumbersome and its targeting and data collection methods invite an often fraudulent culture which, in a vicious circle, skews the very data on which future policy is based.

In defence of the state, insofar as it can avoid party political agendas, it can be an honest broker - if often a slothful, incompetent and wasteful one - and better able than civil society to guarantee equity in the reach and uniformity in the quality threshholds of what is provided. Leaving things to civil society also puts youth work at the mercy of enthusiasts - of which there are good and bad varieties.


If the balance is more in favour of targeted and remedial work, I think this is in principle a legitimate concern of the state, although particular governments' policies and assumptions may be open to question and I am sceptical of constructions of young people as either criminals or victims, with not much space in between. If this model predominates I see no reason why this kind of youth work can't be done by suitably trained informal social educators within state organisations (for example, youth offending and social work teams). I'm no expert, but I believe that this type of social pedagogy is close to the model followed in European countries like France and The Netherlands.

However, it begs the question whether there should be a discrete "Youth Service" at all rather than a corpus of professional competencies and techniques that can be applied to different situations. This raises further questions about the increasing subjection of young people to professional intervention - not least in what are supposed to be informal interactions - but perhaps this would be appropriate in this context. It would also requires a very robust civil society to provide for the developmental social education of all young people if the state were to withdraw.


Either way, I think that the justification for having a “Youth Service” - as opposed to people who do youth work - looks very shaky indeed. I am erring on the side of getting non-remedial youth work out from under the state's wing altogether, but my goodness it's a huge risk, because there isn't a Big Society out there worth the name right now.

I will fight, fight and fight again to save the game I love!

I propose some changes to the rules of association football and would like your opinions about them.

Here are the problems I want to, ahem, tackle. Too many players are sent off. Too few referees dare let common sense confuse their timorously rigid application of the rules. Early yellow cards mean defenders are thenceforth scared to tackle opponents, which is what they're there to do, for fear of dismissal. The ease with which cards are given encourages players to cheat in order to get their opponents into trouble.

Although teams can and do adapt tactically when a man short, this usually spoils the game for spectators, who are ripped off as it is. Football should be a test of skill, tactics and endeavour between two teams of 11 players, not a test of resourcefulness in overcoming - or attempting to engineer - numerically unequal opposition.

It all used to be so different ...

When I was a wee lad following Charlton Athletic I was regularly passed over the heads of the spectators so that I could throw my pocket money at opposing players while simultaneously avoiding the urine streaming down the terraces from those who could afford beer but not a seat. In those days a player’s leg would have had to reach row G in the stand for the referee even to think of sending anyone off. To be dismissed from the field of play was a sin and a shock. Fathers would shield their sons' eyes from the departing miscreant as one might from someone convicted of interfering with livestock.

We must return to those days, with the exception of letting sheep fertilize the pitch at half time, although I propose that this practice continue to be permitted at Millwall.


Here are some rules to improve things, both to enhance spectators’ enjoyment and to help bring some of the little shits who play the game into line.

1. Adopt from rugby the idea of the ‘penalty try’. Either of these sanctions will concentrate minds wonderfully after a first judicious application:

• Award a goal if the last defender handles the ball before it would have crossed the goal line. Don't send the defender off or show a yellow card: the conceded goal is both sanction and deterrent.
• Award a goal if the last defender (this includes the goalkeeper) brings down an attacker. Again, don't send off the defender or show a yellow card unless the tackle deserves one regardless of where it was made. Watch for cheating attackers though - see Rule 4 below.

2. Adopt the ‘Sin Bin’ instead of a second yellow card (which presently results in dismissal). Unless the offence is serious enough to deserve instant dismissal - that is, it is malicious or reckless such as to threaten serious injury, or so cynical that, elsewhere, a custodial sentence in an open facility would be required - the offender must spend 15 minutes out of the game (so is effectively dismissed if it happens during or after the 75th minute or the 105th minute if extra time is being played). Once back on the pitch, any further misdemeanour that merits a card results in straight dismissal.

3. If the last outfield defender brings down an attacker who would otherwise have only the goalkeeper to beat, send the offender to the Sin Bin (unless the nature of the challenge deserves a straight dismissal) and award a penalty, whether or not the foul happened inside the 18-yard box - so it's still attacker against keeper, but on the attacker's terms.

4. Toughen the sanctions for cheating. Send to the Sin Bin any player who dives, dissents, feigns the need for reconstructive facial surgery after a pat on the back from an opponent or asks, "anyway, how much do you f*cking earn then?" as he gets up after a robust tackle.

5. In the case of malicious or reckless tackles, the referee will only have the option of the Sin Bin or a straight dismissal.

Right, that’s sorted. Now to the Palestine Question. Which, if I can solve the problems of football as easily as I just have, should be a piece of cake. Hold my calls unless it's Tony Blair, in which case say I'm out for dinner with Henry Kissinger.

They don't make 'em like that any more!

The phrase "good quality" has a distinctly old fashioned ring, yet there is a place for such traditional expression, even in today's frenetic, cost-conscious world. The quiet popularity enjoyed by the Vanden Plas 1500 is ample proof of that, and it's an intriguing exercise to discover why discerning motorists are so convinced of its sterling qualities. To begin with, the car is totally international in concept: it would look equally at home in Rome, Paris, Vienna, or any other of the great European capitals, yet it has a distinctive air of good breeding that is unmistakably British ...

Oh my God I've burst my brain.

Don't Wear Remembrance Day Poppies ... yet.

Switching on to watch Match of the Day last night – the 23rd of October – I noticed that all three presenters wore Remembrance Day poppies. Remembrance Sunday this year will be on the 14th of November, which is 23 days away.

It made me uncomfortable and annoyed. Why wear them so soon? Hallowe’en, the next peg from which we hang the year, is still over a week off and most shops’ Christmas displays are only a few months old. I’d be happier if they kept their poppies in their pockets until – let’s pick a date – say the 4th November. That’s a week before the 11th November, when the guns fell silent.

Some may consider this a bit picky or even disrespectful towards those who have died in wars, those who survived but need our help, and their dependants.

It's a tricky one. Money from the Poppy Appeal goes to what most except a few, bonkers, people think is a fine cause, so shouldn’t we welcome all efforts to increase the sum raised? I’m sure this was in mind when they prematurely decked out Messrs Lineker, Hansen and Shearer. Match of the Day has a huge audience. If more money is raised by TV stars wearing poppies now, or from Easter, or all year round for that matter, then where’s the harm? Only good will come out of it.

I disagree. I think that wearing poppies too soon devalues the significance of Remembrance Day, which is fundamentally about respecting those who have fought and suffered not raising money for them. Charity should follow from that respect, which has its source and derives its meaning from elsewhere. Subjecting Remembrance Day to the utilitarian dictates of money making and marketing, however slick, however emotive and for however worthy a cause, puts things the wrong way round.

More, it further inures us to the idea that if something can be done, it must be done. This is a variant of the business imperative which says that you should do something if it suits your purpose and you can get away with it. Although it has no place there, it influences the actions of charities, public services and often well-meaning individuals. But it doesn't necessarily follow, even in a good cause, and the assumption that it does may one day blind us to what are good causes and what aren't, which is not always as clear-cut as we may think.

The reason that Remembrance Day is important is that we think it so and make it so, not that we are told it is so, however fine the motives.