Newborn girl will return to parents of ‘obese family’ after ruling
The Times – October 23, 2009. A couple whose overweight children were taken into care by social workers are to be reunited with their newborn baby this week.
Should You Judge a Cover by the Book?
A deep dive into why the aesthetics of a book cover shape our reading experience — and whether that judgement is fair.
Read More Buy NowChildren removed from ‘fat family’
CASE STUDY: ‘Who was going to put me back together again?’
Agnes Houston, nurse-manager of a busy chiropractor’s clinic, lynchpin of her family and carer for her ailing father, thought of herself as the strong person, the one who organised others. Until things started to go wrong.
Dementia – patients charter launched
The Herald – 8 Oct 2009. The Scottish Government needs to find another £15 million a year for the next five years to fund the better management of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a Dementia Manifesto launched by Alzheimer’s Scotland this week. One-quarter of all deaths in Scotland are now due to the condition, which affects 70,000 people and their families – set to almost double in 20 years – and costs the country £1.7 billion a year, according to the charity. Yet it gets only two pence in every pound of medical research funding. One major demand of the manifesto, based on consultations with patients and their families, is for more to be done to help people when they are diagnosed. “No-one should be left to face this on their own,” says the document, which aims to influence Scotland’s first National Strategy on Alzheimer’s due next spring.Also this week, the Scottish government launches a national consultation which will include a face-to-face event to get input from sufferers and carers.
England wasn’t built on babysitting bans
28 September 2009, guardian.co.uk
What would Orwell make of a nation in which mothers are investigated for looking after each other’s children?
When did it happen? When did the English, described by George Orwell in his famous essays, as a byword for tolerance, eternally suspicious of “power worship” and the overweening authoritarian state, turn into people who report their neighbours to the authorities for babysitting each other’s children without permission?
Nurses need specialist training for Alzheimer’s
The Herald – 18 September 2009
ALZHEIMER’S is a ‘Cinderella’ condition which is stigmatised and hidden ‘the way cancer was 30 years ago’ according to the author of a report to be launched on World Alzheimer Day on Monday.
Nurses should be given special training to deal with the growing number of people who face a diagnosis of dementia in Scotland, according to nurse consultant Dot Weaks, whose report ‘There is much more to my practice than checking up on tablets’ is to be launched at the University of Abertay, Dundee. She found that nurses who were given training in helping patients to come to terms with the knowledge they have Alzheimer’s were significantly more effective in dealing with patients.
The nanny state turns parents into kids
The Guardian – 19 September 2009.
Some people have been so infantilised by our authoritarian state that they can no longer perform basic parenting tasks.
“We only refuse what we notice.” This slogan coined by an absent-minded 12-year-old of my acquaintance, in reference to people stealing his chips, seems an apt one to represent the gradual filching of our freedoms by the state. Absorbed in our own thoughts, when we glance back at our plates we may get a shock at how much has been taken.
The Grim Reader – Education Guardian
Reprinted in The Australian Age, 07/9/09, and the Buffalo News, USA, 03/9/09
Tuesday 1 September 2009
One day recently I heard an unearthly wailing coming from my 11-year-old son’s room. It was like no sound I’d ever heard from him before. He doesn’t normally cry at television or films but, curled up alone in his bed reading, when the fantasy character he identified with met a grim end, vanquished by the forces of darkness, he found it absolutely devastating.
Anne Fine deplores ‘gritty realism’ of modern children’s books
by Jack Malvern and Jackie Kemp
Former Children’s Laureate Anne Fine said that modern stories offered little hope for their protagonists
(Colin Hattersley)
A Midsummer’s NIght Dream by Beijing Film Academy
sensitively using aspects of the venue to create a changing dramatic space. The projections on the back wall did things like colour in the organ and draw attention to some…
The Mull Drier
Don’t use a tumble drier. For a family it can use as much C02 as driving an extra car. Instead get a Mull shieling drier, invented by my friends David and Moira Gracie.
Clearing – Education Guardian
Education Guardian – 3rd August 2009
“When I opened the envelope and saw my results, it was just – disappointment. I felt really, really bad. I threw them on the floor and went to my room in tears.”
Scottish designer’s art for windows
As a child, Sarah Campbell spent her summer holidays on the Isle of Lismore. On walks, she and her artist mother would pick tufts of sheep’s wool from the barbed wire fences and take it home. There they would wash, card and spin it, turn it into fabric on a loom and dye it.
Now working as a designer, Sarah has woven those childhood lessons into the one-off “textile paintings” doubling as window blinds that she creates in her workshop on the tiny island which sits under the mountains of Morvern in the Firth of Lorne for her company Mogwaii Design.
Flawed Interviews 2
An eminent expert witness told Jackie Kemp that paedophile cases in Scotland are being dropped due to flawed interview techniques. This is actually an addition I filed to the piece in the Herald below but it was too late to make the paper.
Albie Sachs Interview
Life sentences – GUARDIAN SOCIETY
The celebrated South African judge is still setting liberal precedents with a ruling that parents should not be sent to jail, because of their children’s rights – which, he tells Jackie Kemp, has important lessons for the UK.
Albie Sachs: ‘Judges are the storytellers of the 21st century’. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
Albie Sachs – lecture transcript
This a slightly abridged text of the lecture given by the ANC veteran and South African constitutional court judge Albie Sachs at the National Gallery of Scotland on June 25 2009 in Edinburgh, transcribed from my shorthand note.
Lighting the Spark: Teaching Awards
The Guardian, June 25 2009
Tobermory’s Tweecher
The Herald June 16 2009
NEW HORIZONS: Social networking and blogging are an increasingly important part of classroom life for both pupils and teachers.
The pen has always been a mighty instrument. But in this internet age, when daily musings are so freely dispensed through Twitter, Facebook and blogs, it is easy to forget the power of the written word. The brightly painted town of Tobermory on the Isle of Mull has recently been reminded of this, after the local paper published a series of messages that had been sent by Lynne Horn, a principal teacher at the local high school, through the social-networking site Twitter.
Teachers banned from Twitter after indiscreet tweet
Council imposes ban after teacher’s comments cause outrage in rural community
from the Guardian Education online
Fellow ‘tweechers’ have responded angrily to the ban
Tweeting teachers in Scotland are incensed by reports that Argyll and Bute council has banned teachers from blogging about their work.
The move came after tweets written by a teacher appeared in the Oban Times.
Comments made by the head of the language department at a local high school, to her friends on Twitter – “Have three Asperger’s boys in S1 class: never a dull moment! Always offer an interesting take on things” – have caused outrage.