chrisp65

I think maybe on the subject of prisons being 'easy' or three star or a joke it very much depends on what wing of what prison you might find yourself in. There are simply too many variables on the quality of the environment to say 'prison' is good or bad for all prisoners. It's far too sweeping a statement to have any universal truth about it. On prison needing to be orrible like South Africa to deter people - I guess they must have low crime and low offending rates there then to prove that point? No. As for there being no severe poverty or people not being as poor as they used to be, I think maybe it's easy to think like this if you don't come in to contact with absolute or relative poverty. Sometimes the poverty is unfortunate, sometimes it can be self inflicted by poor decision making or ill health (including mental health). Sometimes it can be depravation inflicted by others, most often parents. I live in a town where every house is walking distance from a sandy beach yet there are kids in the town that don't go to the seaside until it's an organised school trip. When you're raised in those circumstances you are living with poverty, even if 'dad' has an x-box and a penchant for some blow. Poverty, poor education, mental health and prison all feed off each other. Equally, some people are just shits that see prison as a nuisance or risk in their profession of being low life scum.

firstly: don't panic second: get in early tomorrow and make a bigger better deal to cover it off no worries, my pleasure

The bit I picked up from it was that Ms Morgan confirming teachers as well as pupils will be judged on this. So there is the usual risk that we will now see schools teaching 10 and 11 year old children how to pass a times tables exam. It's like most everything, difficult to disagree with the overall principle, let's see the detail and unforeseen consequences. @Veloman, you mention you've worked in Prison Ed. How did you find the level of english language reading and writing amongst offenders?

If the boss patently employed the wrong person and then told them the annual budget was cut, who's fault would it be if the company had a shit year? What if the following year the budget was cut again and a new guy with another dodgy CV was employed to replace the half arsed previous head of department? Meanwhile, it appears our best accountants have been let go as they earned too much money, but don't worry, we've employed a load of kids that can't add up, we've got dozens of them so that should work out fine. I think maybe 5, 6, 7 years in to that sort of business you could point at the boss and say 'bad boss'.

Aston Villa: has anyone tried just switching it off and then on again?

Particularly annoying when coupled with the hand gestures up and down to emphasise how hard they are working.

1 minute 20 seconds in, I'm not sure they're actually singing the right words, I'm no lip reader but it looks a bit rude.

punky noodlings, very confusing

Self assessment is a wonderful thing, but some of the best pitches and presentations I've given have been where I was a last minute stand in for my boss who'd thrown a wobbler and couldn't do it. No time to fret and none of the real pressure that you'd get from 2 weeks of prep time.

Oh well done that chap, that's it.

yep, Forever Autumn. I'll have a look for the animated piece that went with the other one, it was sort of space men / aliens playing violins. I'll do it later, I have to demolish a large plate of roast gammon and fried eggs now.

Did that used to be one of those BBC fillers? They had a sort of light classical thing and a Justin Heyward track about autumn that they used to put on to fill the five minute gaps that somehow appeared in the schedule. Anyone remember those days? Bin bags on the streets, pinching coal from down the docks, jumpers for goal posts, candles for power cuts...

Too many genres and sub genres, people crave labels and the next new thing. When only 25 people like 'urban psychobilly' and then the band splits in two and one of the new bands is described as 'post urban hard psychobilly' it's probably time to just label it all as music. Hair metal, death thrash sex metal, urban dubstep grime trance, nu trip hop lite. Music is music.

They actually missed a decent bike and took two duffers. They obviously thought the hammerite on the handle bars was some sort of secret olympic quality kevlar material. Annoying thing for me was it happened 10:00pm in the evening and the police were called by someone that disturbed them. Police or passer by didn't bother telling me about it though. I found out the next day, phoned the police and they already knew. They said they'd sent a car around but didn't see anything. Which couldn't have been the most observant police drive by ever, they didn't spot power tools lined up on the roof ready to go or the grass strimmer and roof bars leaning against the wall ready to go. I'm just amazed that in 12 hours, the burglars didn't return or some other scrote help themselves to the impromptu yard sale. So, burglary was Wednesday, I found out on Thursday. Friday, first policeman turns up and asks me why I didn't report it Wednesday. I explain the story to date. He queries why I'm now saying it happened at exactly 10:00pm when in my original phone statement I said between 5:00pm and 10:00pm. I explain it was always exactly 10:00pm, or at least that's when the police told me it happened. Then, in taking my statement over the phone when I repeated 10 back to them, I was told I couldn't give an exact time, I had to give a 'slot', so I chose the 'between 5 and 10' slot. The next day, Saturday, he came back, this time he had his sergeant with him. The sergeant asked me to go over the whole timeline with him one more time. Which I did. They got it, the facts were locked down! I offered them a look at the garage and we all trooped off up the garden, teas in hand. I showed them the smudged remnants of the boot print on the door and the sergeant asked if forensics got a decent photo of it. I explained he was the first policeman to actually stand in the garden and look at the door. He did a sort of swivel on his heels, but even facing away from me he quite clear said 'oh for **** sake!'. So, it's Saturday, burglary was Wednesday and the Sergeant tells me there's been a bit of a cock up but f I can just bear with them, forensics will be around. Monday: I get a phone call 'Hello, it's Mike. I'm not coming out for this.' I ask Mike who he is. 'Oh yeah, I'm Mike from forensics, you had a burglary last week, there won't be anything left for me to see so I'm not coming, best thing you can do is go down Cash Converters once a week and see if you spot your bike'. End of that week, Thursday or Friday, I get a follow up call from my local community police officer to tell me that the forensics report is back from the lab and they didn't find anything. I tell him that's quite interesting as forensics never came. Later that evening his sergeant phones to check if forensics ever visited. Sergeant assures me this is simply somebody not doing their job and nothing to do with budget cuts or a lack of resource. I did wonder why he thought cock up was better than budget constraints, but I let that one slide. They were all really nice people trying to help. I was embarrassed in the end how much time it was taking up. This week I've had a letter offering me counselling.

I had two bikes stolen from the garage two weeks before Christmas. Some people are just defective. On the up side, witnessing first hand two weeks of the comedy incompetence of the police was almost worth it. Almost.

I think I'm fully up to speed.

don't bash the bishops

How do you keep a scientist with facts quiet? Surely if we know they have facts, then they haven't been kept quiet?

Agreed, you've only got to look at the pedigree, Yes, Genesis, Rush, Eagles, Zeppelin, Wings, Love to see an awful lot of mid atlantic white middle aged mullet wearing shite going on. But let's not be too judgemental, let's see what Rob actually posts up later. (no way is this posting for effect, uh uh, no way)

Don't knock it! Actually, these guys are Thai (video and CD are different bands) and yes, Xann did tip me off about the album.

I would guess from the rest of the things he's enjoying it was his meatball sub.