arcanefireuk

Hi, would u like to donate too ( Insert name of latest blag here)........

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:40:34 GMT

I don't know about in other country's but in the UK over the past few years it has become quite common to see People in the street wearing bright coloured vest proclaiming to be from well known charities who will stop you in the middle of the street and ask you to sign up to give monthly donations to whatever charity it is that they are wearing on their vests.

Sounds like a good idea right, which in all fairness it is if you want to donate on a regular basis to a charity of your choice but there's a slight snag with what these people are doing.

THEY DO NOT WORK OR DONATE THEIR TIME TO THE CHARITY!!!!!

In fact they work for an agency which pays them commission or an hourly wage (The people have the choice when they sign up to work for them) and the agency has to be paid first from what you donate so the charity is lucky if it sees any money in the first 2 years of your donating via direct debit. They also say that if you tick the right box on the form that the charity will get gift aid off the government (which is when you donate £1 the govt donates £1) so in effect your actually donating twice.

When stopped in the street by these greedy money grabbing bastards I tend to just tell them that I refuse to pay their wages or commission and walk off. I get quite a bit of abuse at times but it's funny as hell when I can be bothered to reply that I know how the scam works. These so agents do not even know anything about the charities they represent which I proved to a few friends when approached by an idiot claiming to be working for Greenpeace. When asked if I knew who Greenpeace where I just told him that the French had the right idea about dealing with them. The Con Artist asked why and obviously didn't have a clue about Greenpeace's history or aims as the Rainbow Warrior incident in the 80's is something that any real supporter of Greenpeace would know about.

And how do I know all about this. An old mate of mines Wife does this for a living and she has told me all about it and warned me never to sign up to anything on the street. If I want to set up a monthly donation to any charity that the best thing is to do it directly through the charity it's self.

Team Read, The Route to instant gratification!!!

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:16:21 GMT

For the past few years the public libraries have been running a summer scheme for children called Team Read, with the idea of encouraging the millions of children in the country to read more. They offer stickers when you finish a book and once you have read a set amount of books then the child will also receive a gold medal.
"Great Idea" I thought when My partner told me about it, and that the step son had been doing it for the past few years, and again wanted to do it this summer. So off we went to the local Library to sign him up for the scheme.

Once we got there and got the munchkin signed up off we went to help him choose some books, This is where the major flaws in the whole scheme came clear. It turns out that it is any 6 books that the children are required to read. OK so the stepson does what the majority of kids do and takes out books that are well under his reading level. Despite my partner and myself trying to interest him in more age appropriate material, he wouldn't even bother looking at any thing other than the books suitable for 6 year olds. And why wouldn't he take out something that really did require him to read? Because he didn't have to in order to get his prizes. And i noticed that it was just not him been like this it was the majority of other kids that where there.

Now I know that kids just don't want to read these days at all, and that Team's Read Principles are good in essence, but as normal it seems that the execution of the idea is woefully not thought out at all. For the first time ever I found myself writing to the organizers to express my concerns and suggestions. Below is the letter I sent and also the reply that I received ( Promptly for a government agency as well)

Ok My Letter First

To Whom it may concern

While I think that the Team Read Promotion that is going on in public libraries is a great and wonderful thing I feel that whilst the idea is good, in that it is attempting to encourage children to read, I feel that it does not actually do this. My 9 year old step son has been taking part in this scheme for the past few years and it seems that he (and his friends) are taking out books that are well below their actual reading level just so they can get the gold medal quickly. Whilst myself and my partner have tried to encourage our son to take out more age appropriate books he refuses to do so as he knows that all he has to do is read a set amount of any books to receive the gold medal.

I feel that it would be a better idea if the medals where awarded if the children finish books that are off a set list for their age band or books above that age band as this would encourage the children to actually read more age appropriate material and foster a genuine interest in reading, and provide more satisfaction when they gain their medal as they know they will have actually deserved it.

Thank you

and the reply was

Thank you very much for your email. It’s great to hear that your step-son and his friends have been taking part in the Summer Reading Challenge for the past few years. We will certainly take your thoughts about the challenge into consideration when planning future challenges. We do feel that it is important not to take away the element of fun for the children and of choice, and I am inclined to think that if children only received a medal for reading set books then they might get less enjoyment out of the experience, and feel that it was a bit too much like school. One of the aims of the Summer Reading Challenge is to encourage reading for pleasure over the summer holidays and hopefully, even after they have received their gold medal, the children will be enjoying themselves enough to keep reading. I understand that this does not always happen.

There is flexibility locally. Many library staff will take time over the challenge to talk with individual children to encourage them to try new genres, authors and appropriate books for their reading ability, and will often acknowledge that reading a longer or more challenging book for some children is worth two sets of stickers for example. There is also the website www.teamread.co.uk that your son and his friends might like to use and it might spark some more interest in reading.

So what is so wrong about been told if you want the reward you have to of proved that you have done the required work at a level that is appropriate? A friend I talked to about this, who has just graduated university, stated that getting the medal would be like her having to take a KS2 test for her university finals! A very apt observation.

At the end of the day the only thing that Team Read seems to be encouraging is instant gratification and to do as little as possible to earn the prize.

Health and Safety

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:30:53 GMT

Ok so today I took my step-son to the local park to play Frisbee and go on the playground rides, only when we got there we encountered a slight problem which upset the poor little mite and has in all likely hood upset hundreds of other children in the local area, the two slides where GONE without a trace, all that remained was a patch of scuffed up earth and wood chippings where one slide had once stood and a wooden board covering the gap on the climbing frame where the other slide started.

There was no notice of what had happened to the slides, and none of the other parents seemed to know what had happened to them, leading to a fair amount of speculation where the most common conclusion was that the slides had been taken away due to "Health and Safety" concerns by the Local Council.

So what had happened? Had a child with an overbearing, protective parent bumped their heads going down the slide? And have their parents smelt an opportunity for a fast buck in this corrupt and mindless compensation culture? And off course the council in an attempt to prevent more stupid pathetic claims like this have had no choice but to remove the menacing slide. Therefore been forced to take away an integral part of childhood for many. As long as councils have made an effort to make the playground as safe as possible then there has to be an acceptance that accidents do happen and children are always going to get bumps and bruises at playgrounds which can not be blamed on any one but the rigours of childhood.

Ok so after searching the local news paper records it seems that someone has stolen the slides for scrap metal!!!!(this was 3 months ago and they have yet to be replaced)

But I guess even though this issue has a legitimate reason it has made me think about the whole compensation culture as a whole.

Just recently a school caretaker (who was in his late 60's) successfully sued the local authority that he worked for to the tune of about 70 thousand pounds after he fell off a stepladder. He claimed he had been inadaquatly trained for using a step ladder. What on earth??? I don't know about any of you readers but I don't see how you can provide inadequate training for something so simple. All the training needed is how to open it, place it safely and not to over extend yourself. And I would also think that a man who had worked for years in this role would have a modicum of common sense and some experience in the use of the highly technical aspects of stepladder use. So how the hell is it possible to be under trained? Would this man of sued his wife if it had happened at home.

And what about the man who tried to sue Marks and Spencer's for hundreds of thousands of pounds, because he slipped on a grape in the car park (The grape had fallen out of his bag), Surprisingly, on this occasion the judge had the good sense to throw the case out on it's ear. Unfortunately the man has not been charged with wasting the courts time.

The law of the land needs to change and to change fast in order to challenge the abuse of compensation claims that are brought about. I agree that if a person or company is genuinely to blame then they should be held responsible and have to pay compensation but these days it seems that these genuine claims are greatly out shadowed by the majority of claims which to be honest are just utter nonsense and smell of nothing more than media driven attempts at grasping for free money.
My own personal suggestions for dealing with this are:

1) Ban the No Win No Fee solicitors from brainwashing the masses with their claims that you can get a wad of cash if you have ever been hurt ( This would be worth it just to get rid of some of the most boring television adverts known to man so another added benefit)
2) Have an independent commission, which should assess each case that is brought up even before the other parties solicitors get involved and give it the yay or nay before it even gets to court.
3) Limit the amount of compensation available and have fully detailed court appointed investigators to actually determine the amount of injury and long term effect

Any more ideas would be welcome