Childcare fiasco

It's going to be hard to add anything useful to the rightful tirade against the latest story of state interference in how we live: the Ofsted inspectors who told two police officers that they were breaking the law by looking after each other's children. What worries me is not so much the bad drafting of the law (though that does bring law into disrepute) but the way in which the jobs of so many public servants seem to be set up. Somebody honestly believed that they were meeting their objectives by seeking out this breach of the rules; thought that, among all the shortcomings in children's education and care, this would be something worth pursuing. Are jobs and objectives defined so narrowly? Is anyone allowed any independence? Is anyone actually trying to inspire anyone else with a culture of public service to - in this case - children and families? Or did someone just say, somewhere along the line "you tick these boxes and you'll be OK"?

Tourism and the Moral Maze

Last week's Moral Maze programme on BBC Radio 4 had a disappointly poor quality of debate, so I turned it off before the end and might have missed some gems. The debate seemed to consist of witnesses who were concerned about the environmental and economic impact of mass tourism being branded as killjoys, and the witnesses desperately trying to show that they weren't.

What seemed to me missing was the (to me) obvious truth that "too much of a good thing" can be applied to individuals. The panel seemed to be saying that avoiding too much tourism would be unfair because it would mean that only the rich could travel. But another way to avoid too much tourism would be to enable everyone to travel but to do it less often. So instead of 1/10 of the population taking two high-impact holidays a year, why don't we work towards enabling the whole population to take a high-impact holiday every five years?

MPs' expenses

Well, it's interesting that all these MPs are saying they broke no rules, so some people are now saying there should more rules. Doesn't this fiasco make it clear that it's not enough to keep to rules, so that what we need is not more rules but more trust? If anything, shouldn't we have fewer rules, because the problem with rules is that people think that they are enough?

Mathematical joke

Q: What happened to the research engineer who took too long calculating his Hessian matrix?

A: He got the sack!

Success at Petersfield Write Angle

This is what the Petersfield Herald wrote about the Write Angle evening:

WRITE ANGLE GOES WITH PETERSFIELD'S MIKE KNEE AND OPEN MIC

Before Mike takes on a new 'professional name' (his niece called him 'uncle Mike' and 'un-cool' Mike came out of it), - Write Angle strongly declares Mike is anything but - 'uncool'!

He handles the guitar as if he was born with it in his fingers. His lilting voice and the magic of what he calls 'contemporary folk' music put the instrument to its fullest capacity, and his lyrics are clever, witty, stretching out in all directions. There is nothing quite like sitting back to an evening of good music with 'spunk and bite' and that's what Mike Knee provided.

Lorna Silvester accompanied him on the flute for several of his songs and, together, they make the music of angels. The lyrics, though, range over more 'biting' stuff, like 'The lie of the land', 'Shanghai is not what it seems', a song for sudoku addicts, and, bicycles '2 wheels good, 4 wheels better' while riding er...'bum to bum'. There can be no doubt the audience was mesmerised by these two talented, diverse and confident performers. Lots of laughter and enthusiasm showed once again that Write Angle has something for everybody and is more than just poetry performance.

Petersfield Write Angle

I'm going to be the featured artist at the Petersfield Write Angle poetry/music/cabaret night on Tuesday 17 March.

Are we driven by metaphor?

I think many of our attitudes to life's problems are driven too strongly by metaphor. A very pervasive picture of human behaviour is to see us as some kind of pressure vessel which, if not allowed to "let off steam", could "explode" catastrophically. This picture probably exists because it works in many circumstances. Anyone who has had to look after children over several rainy days in the holidays would probably agree! And then we use the metaphor to argue against harbouring resentment; problems should be "let out" so that they do not "build up". I am not an expert, but this approach seems to be at the heart of our Western middle-class therapy culture. Of course it works in many cases, but the danger is to argue from the metaphor. I think C.S. Lewis said of allegories something to the effect that they should be used to inspire and illuminate, but not squeezed too dry (much like the metaphor I have just used). Could it be that sometimes resentment or grudges can just fizzle out or be over-ridden by later concerns? Our desire to dredge them up (another metaphor) could one day be seen as unscientific as the old practice of blood-letting to rid the body of disease.