Behind the Headlines 7

There’s a bit of a rumble about a man who was Fined £550 – for leaving wheelie bins out. The story has made its way into the Daily Mail as an example of little bureaucrats pushing people about.

Now there are two reactions to this. A knee-jerk shriek of  ”But that’s outrageous” and a sensible “That’s really weird, there must be more to it.”

There is.

Gareth Robinson has been fined £350, plus £200 court costs. But not for simply leaving a bit out for a week or so. He claims they were left outside for “two days at the most”.

It does seem a bit unreasonable that the council swooped down on someone for leaving their bins out for a couple of days. Turns out- they didn’t.

Reading beyond the headline shows this was not a one-off occurrence. Neighbours apparently find the Robinsons’ bins problematic, as there have been many complaints to the council. Mr Robinson had numerous warnings and notices about his bins before being given a fixed penalty of £60. Like the many warnings, he ignored this too.

Then he was summoned to court. He failed to appear to challenge council’s actions, and was fined in his absence.

There’s no mention in the news as to whether his neighbours had a quiet word, but if he’s the sort of man you can approach like that, it’s unreasonable to assume they didn’t.

The headline seems to imply that he left his bin out one day, and had a £550 fine land on his doormat soon after. This is not the case.

Behind the Headlines 6?

Yesterday I caught a front page headline “EU to ban all shop refunds”

It sounds like the usual swivel-eyed anti-EU rubbish that the tabloid press like to use to wind up their readership. But is it?

Anyone any idea what this was about?

Behind the Headlines 5

Actually not so much behind the headlines as behind the whole story!

The Daily Mail ran a piece on how in Watford barmy councillors had banned parents from parks and playgrounds, and had put special trained supervisors in their place. No longer can a family take their toddlers to enjoy time on the swings, they must watch from a distance.

Except- it wasn’t true.  Not one word.

Well maybe one or two words. Parents have been told not to hang around after dropping their kids off at supervised adventurous play facility. The facility is not an open playground for the under 5s as you may find in a park, but has always been an enclosed area run by trained supervisors. The facility had become a bit lenient with the rule over letting parents stay for the session, but one or two had begun to get in the way of activities. So they put their foot down and began to enforce the policy.

Cue one disgruntled parent, and you’ve got a classic case of flat earth news!

For an in-depth take in this issue see Sara Bedford’s post here

This is getting silly

I’m in a desperate moral dilemma.

I’m actually quite glad Russell Brand has left the BBC. He’s an irritating idiot who rarely makes use of the decent brain he was born with and isn’t funny. BUT, I’m deeply concerned that his departure means giving in to the wishes of the easily offended, ignorant mob.

I’m getting fed up of the whole circus surrounding this whole saga. Listening to Richard Allinson in the mornings (a welcome break from Sarah Kennedy) I have to agree with his weariness.

Do I need to summarise the situation? Well OK I’ll be quick. The week before last, Andrew Sachs was due to be interviewed by Russell Brand and his guest Jonathan Ross for the Russel Brand show on Radio 2. Only, he was unexpectedly and inexplicably unavailable. So they decided to leave a message on Sachs’ answer phone, in the manner of teenage youths leaving a jokey message for a mate who’d forgotten to turn up at the party. Only Andrew Sachs is not a mate of Russell and Jonathan, and he didn’t find it all that funny. So far, so childish.

Fast forward to this Sunday just gone, and the Mail On Sunday gets hold of the story, over a week later, and in their inimitable style twist and misrepresent it in the worst possible light to elicit outrage from their readership. Which they get, in spades.

Unlike the 30,000 who complained, I actually heard the show “live”. OK, so not
live but on the original broadcast. It took me a while to work out that Jonathan Ross. It was not the best radio programme I’d ever heard, and I only kept it on because I was loathe to get the laptop out and listen to something else. It wasn’t, I have to say in the best of taste. They were irresponsible and did something wrong. It was as some say “out of order”. But it didn’t warrant all this.

To me, the people who are malicious are the hordes of people who didn’t listen to the broadcast and complained, based on the press hype. Particularly the ones who don’t care what was said, but just want to stick the boot in. People who complained because they hate Brand and Ross for being overpaid and overhyped, or because they can’t stand that sort of broadcasting were given an excuse to behave in a despicable manner. People who would describe it, not in terms like “a bit offensive” or “childish” or “stupid” but as “disgusting filth”. Most of the 30000 complaints could be more accurately described as malicious than that stupid childish broadcast.

These people and the ones in this case who deserve the lion’s share of the opprobrium. It is a massive injustice that they have been listened to. I can’t be pleased that a radio show I vaguely dislike is off the air, because of the terrible, terrible way in which it came about.

I am not sorry to see Brand go, and can take or leave Ross. But I am deeply concerned as to the sort of people who are getting their voices listened to over this.

Behind the Headlines 4

Not a specific news item this time but a whole raft of coverage:

The Scout Association have released new guidance on sexual health. These guidelines mainly apply to 14-18 year olds, also known as “Explorer Scouts”.

This has predictably been better reported better in, ahem, some areas of the press than others. Lurid headlines about Scouts being handed out condoms, and stories suggesting that actual sex education lessons comparable to those taught in schools will be taking place in every Scout Hut up and down the country. Based on this misinformation lots of people cough and splutter without engaging their brains and thinking there may be more to it than a tabloid newspaper story.

What was being announced was a new guidance note giving hints and tips on what to do if a young person approaches a leader with an awkward question. There is no obligation for any leader to give sex ed lessons, indeed the guidance suggests referring the young people to the experts, and the press release echos this. Actual sex education will remain the responsibility of the schools.

In Explorers we think about, discuss and examine all aspects of life. Scouting exists to develop well rounded people, with a sense of judgement and awareness of the world they live in. It is not just an outdoor activities club. The guidance focuses mainly on the moral side of all this, and not the biological side. Avoiding peer pressure and abstinence are key messages in all this, not “here’s a condom- get on with it, if you want”. So the spluttering types who are ranting about how we shouldn’t be encouraging sex don’t realise how close we are to how they would like us to be.

Schools teach sex from a biological and practical basis, and some kids think that there is something missing. Scouting gives young people space to talk about their lives, ask questions openly, and make sense of it all- not just on this issue but on any issue that concerns them. And, while I may not have been the best leader on this topic, I have worked closely with someone who was quietly asked the sort of questions that this guidance helps to answer.

Yes Explorer Units can, if their members ask, arrange trips to health clinics. Scouting has always focused on healthy living as part of the development of its members. But such trips are not compulsory programme items, and it is not the case that all units will run such trips: it will depend on the unit members’ needs if it is appropriate.

If the explorers don’t feel the need to discuss or focus on this topic, they will not be made to. And Explorer Units will not be handing out condoms willy nilly (if you pardon the expression)- that is a definite media distortion.

The bottom line is Scouting has been concerned with developing the moral, physical and spiritual potential of young people since year dot, and this is just part and parcel of that. These issues have never been off limits, we just now have guidance on how to deal with them.

As a coda, I have read how the person who wrote the press release “wants shooting”, because people in the more sensationalist end of the media were bound to take the wrong end of the stick. My point of view is this: The lions share of the blame for people getting hot under the collar after reading a sensationalised story in the tabloid press without the appropriate “pinch of salt” lies fairly and squarely in the minds of the people getting hot under the collar. Cries of “they should have known people would take the wrong end of the stick” unjustly spares due opprobium from the people whose nature it is to take the wrong end of the stick.

Behind the headlines 3

Another emotively misleading headline

Ketchup ban at council’s schools

(or at least it did at time of writing!)

It is not a ban, though. The article admits that the kids can still have tomato sauce – just not the bought-in stuff that was high in salt and sugar. The school makes its own tomato sauce in its kitchens. And making choices over the menu is hardly “banning” stuff.

And according to the TV reports on this story the kids like it!

The news reporter just quotes the one parent who thought it daft. This is a dishonest misrepresentation of the facts. A more accurate headline would be “School makes own tomato ketchup. Some don’t like it.”

As always in the media a story is distorted and spun into a form where it provokes rather than informs the reader. I expect this of some news outlets, but not the BBC!

Behind the headlines 2

In the metro this morning there was a story in the Metro Train-in-Spain teachers shut school. It goes on to paint training days in Spain as a holiday in term time for teachers, and implies that closing the school for training is unusual.

Nothing could be further from the truth! INSET days are prescribed by government- the school has got to do them- this isn’t even obscure, it’s a well known fact and in not acknowledging in Metro were putting a dishonest spin on the story. The only story here is that a School chose to hold its training abroad because it was cheaper that way.

The BBC this morning had a more balanced view- parents were broadly in favour of saving money, and acknowledged that investing in training the teachers was investing in the kids- not creaming off money for a jolly away day.

Behind the Headlines.

In the metro recently Muslim Sues Tesco for Making Him Carry Beer.

Except read the article carefully. He didn’t. He’s suing Tesco over aggressive treatment when he asked to be excused transporting beer, and the subsequent ill-treatment. It’s the harassment and ill-treatment he received after making the request that is the subject of the case- not the fact he was asked to move alcohol. He was foolish to accept a job that he would be uncomfortable with, but that doesn’t excuse aggressive behaviour.

1984 anyone?

This story is doing the rounds, and as usual has lost something in the retelling.

The version I heard on Radio 2 this morning went like this. Telford Council have come under fire for instructing park staff to challenge anyone who was in the park without children.

Now either you’ve immediately started spluttering about not being able to enjoy your local park anymore, or you’re wondering if there’s any more to it.

What on the surface appears to be a manifestation of the national belief that it’s not safe to let your kids out because paedophiles are rife these days, turns out to have another dimension.

According to the Telegraph the young people who fell foul of this policy were activists handing out leaflets on climate change, not people suspiciously without purpose. In the Telegraph article a former childcare worker is quoted as saying:

“It appears that the council wants to use child protection as a cover for anything they don’t like taking place in the park.

Hmm.

According to an acquaintance that lives in the area, this is not the first time the rule has been used against leafletters, the first person to have done so was a campaigner who wanted to publicise the fact that the council had plans to build on the park. He went on to allege that the policy was invented specifically to justify clamping down on his campaigning, adding that the council had to treat the climate change campaigners in the same way as they were stuck with the policy.