As we pulled up in Malham today we found a parking space outside the pub and I noticed a sign and a request of £1 to park there. I gave Nathan the coins and asked him to go and pay, he circled the milk churn as above and then shouted “Mum, how does this work?”.

“Is there a hole in the top, just put the money in there” I answered back. “But where does the ticket come out?” he said

LOL

We were going over to Shipley today to pick up the caravan we won on Ebay, been desperate to get one and thought we’d make a day of it and visit Malham Cove.

I have photos of my mum here in black & white, must dig them out. What a spectacular place.

And here is a picture of our new weekender home from the outside, it’s green which I’m not keen on but the inside is lovely.

The below isn’t my work but the author wants it posted far and wide, you can alter it in anyway you like too.

The time has come for all parents to wake up and become aware of the massive legal changes to UK law that are being rolled out and will affect us all. Even parents who live outside of the UK should look out for this coming to their country and try to stop it before it happens. Here, the new system is called Every Child Matters ( http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/ ) and it seeks to monitor and control every aspect of every child’s life.

The ECM regime is centred around five ‘outcomes’, with which every child is expected to comply, but the outcomes don’t mean what they imply. “Be healthy,” “Stay safe,” “Enjoy and achieve,” “Make a positive contribution,” and “Achieve economic well-being,” all sound quite harmless and beneficial, but when you scratch the surface they actually mean something quite different.

The five outcomes are all measured by a whole raft of indicators, and if your child is seen to be failing in any outcome, he or she will be put through an eCAF ( http://tinyurl.com/ag6686 ) which is a long and extremely invasive questionnaire that collects information about every aspect of the child’s life, and lodges the answers in the child’s file on the new Contactpoint database. If you look at the end of the questions, you will see the requirement for an ‘action plan’, the progress of which is to be tracked, monitored and recorded on the child’s file.

The thing is, the criteria for the outcomes is going to be so tight that it will be almost impossible for every child to reach them all the time. For example, the draft guidance for anyone coming into contact with children on ‘When to suspect child maltreatment’ ( http://tinyurl.com/bv23r2 ) includes things like inappropriate, or ill-fitting clothes, not taking prescribed medicine, ‘excessive clinginess’, temper tantrums, or other ‘inappropriate behaviour’. If you’ve got children, you will know that most can and will fall foul of at least one of those points in stressful circumstances. The ‘Stay Safe’ outcome is then breached and an eCAF carried out.

But the most worrying outcome is the last one. ‘Achieve economic wellbeing’ actually means that any child whose family on a lower than average income (which is actually quite high:  http://tinyurl.com/b76f2r  and is worked out *after* housing costs and tax) who is receiving Child Tax Credits, when both parents are not in full-time employment, will fail to meet the outcome and be made the subject of an eCAF and associated action plan. Causing a child to live in [relative] poverty is now seen as abusive and this may not affect you now, but hardly anyone’s position is 100% safe in the current economic climate. To address the issue of lack of jobs, the government is working with corporate ‘partners’ to bring in a full-time compulsory workfare programme.

The ‘Every Child Matters’ and Anti-Child Poverty programmes are not designed only to help children in real need. Systems are already in place to help those children and our state welfare system ensures that nobody ever needs to go hungry in this country. The intention - and the result, if we do nothing - will be to completely change the nature of normal family life forever.

So what can we do? This is difficult. Most of the changes are happening by Statutory Instrument, which is not voted on in Parliament, so your MP is probably unable to make a difference although it might help to write to them with your concerns ( http://www.writetothem.com/ ). Petitions are usually ignored in matters of major reform programmes such as these, and protest marches seem to have very little effect. Voting for a different political party will not help: all the main parties are committed to doing the same thing, or worse.

Perhaps the most powerful thing you can do just now is to talk to other parents. Pass this message around, post it on forums, send it in emails. If you know anyone who works with children or is likely to come into contact with them in a professional capacity, talk to them especially about it. Ask them if they realise the full extent of the planned changes and consequences, so that pressure can be put on the relevant trade unions to try to resist the process. As a parent, you would be wise to consider your family’s position in the light of the changes, and possibly also to advise or warn your children accordingly.

But long-term, these new and invasive laws and systems need to be repealed. The political party system will not do it. We need independent MPs with the strength and integrity to work together in reversing all of the recent seismic legal attacks on our civil liberty. Do you know anyone who would be willing to stand as an independent MP on this issue? It might be the one thing that actually gets people out to vote.

I have abandoned the challenge but I still do want to share

On the 27th January, we went to a friends birthday party at the large soft play centre which was great fun.

On the Friday of that week I went along for my first visit to our local LETs (Local Exchange Trading Systems ) . The membership secretary lives quite near to me and had offered me a lift, Nathan was pestering to go but as I was going somewhere I didn’t have a clue what was acceptable or not I said I’d go and check it out first. I need not have worried, they were a great bunch of people, one family I knew from our local home education group which was a suprise and children were extremely welcome. I sold a few bits and managed to make some cobbles and have also had a request for one of my other offers so I will be banking quite a bit this month. The best thing about it is you don’t have to earn straight away to spend but I can’t think of anything I particulary need just now. Not all the schemes work the same and my main motivation is a bit of social time with like minded people but if you are interested there is a site that says if there is one near you http://www.letslinkuk.org/

On the Saturday we were invited along to the pantomime with the cubs, we got to sit on the front row to watch the chaos. Our local panto is particulary well attended and they raise a huge amount for local charities.

Well Saturday night was hilarious, we were going out for my daughters birthday, a week late but last weekend most of us were away. I was at the Ecoflow conference which was amazing! Took me right back to the days of the AOL bashes and also gave me a much needed boost, the people were also just so lovely. We had a really funny experience with the food, I had ordered a vegan meal but my friend had said she had done the same last year and ended up with fruit salad for starters and pudding and a bowl of pasta ( no sauce or veg) for main course) so I said I wasn’t going to admit it was me who had ordered the vegan meal. What she declined to tell me, was it was a different hotel and this poor Maitre D was wandering around with this bowl of soup for ages before I admitted it was mine lol.

Anyway back to kates birthday, it was UV /Glow night at the local night club and we spent Friday walking round town to get an outfit, I was over the moom to discover the 80s fashion are back and got a batwing top and leggings lol and accessorised with orange quite literally.

Such a fun night, managed to fit some pool hustling in and carried out first aid, but Sunday morning I was horrified to realise that because I hadn’t worn nail varnish for centuries I had nothing to remove the bright orange stuff I had painted them with. I had to put my gloves on and head to Tescos to get something as I had vision of having to turn up the meeting we had on the Monday with the DCSF being something of a comedy affair.

Monday I was supposed to be meeting someone from a train at 9:30, but there wasn’t a great deal happening and at 9:55 the 9:03 still hadn’t turned up so I went across to the meeting.

The meeting was interesting, I felt that the man from the DCSF felt the review would be ultimately helpful to us but I hope we got our concerns and reasons why it could be so damaging over to him. The main problem in the whole system is that it is down to how an individual sees the law instead of acting within it, they harrass innocent people and threaten them with their most precious children and noone wants to take the risks that that would ultimately bring. All we are asking is that they actually take our views and our childrens views into account and stop this harrassment of us.  Anyway, getting all political now, if you could possibly sign our petition we would be grateful http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Homeedreview/#detail

This is Nathans contribution

Well Monday was also Ryans 9th birthday but I had to pretty much abandon him to go to this meeting although we did have cake for tea.

He had asked for Yu-Gi-Oh cards for his birthday but the gift he is most pleased about is the Mamma Mia soundtrack CD his sister bought him and I’d be suprised if he didn’t know all the words by now.

On Tuesday we went to a softplay centre locally as Ryans treat, we decided no parties this year so this was Ryans choice.

Yesterday we went to Natures World to our home ed meeting, the adults were amazed at the ice formations, perfect geometrical shapes. This was a block of ice on a chair.

It’s a shame the children thought it more fun to break it all up lol.

Looks like my challenge has gone by the wayside, I didn’t really expect to manage it but did think I’d last longer than 23 days. I could make alsorts of excuses up here like I have been so busy with work after the conference last week, I have been out and about a lot this week too, in fact I have done some great stuff this week and I will probably come back later and tell you all about it but I could have found 5 minutes to upload a photo and write a few words too.

Day 23, what have I done lol!! Just went out to buy some tights for my weekend away and came back with Abba Singstar, how did that happen? Wish I had time to play with it, but must get packed. I intend to put my Iphone through it’s paces this weekend too, see if I really can get all my email no matter where I am.

 Day 22 was my big babies birthday, we went to a restaurant/cafe in the town we have never been before and it was lovely and we felt very reasonable. Everything was freshly made, no prepacked, microwaved stuff as had been my experience at a different place. The staff were very accomadating, bringing paper table cloths for the children to draw on and Matchbox cars. We’ll be going back there.

Well Day 20 went out of the window but here is Day 21. I signed Ryan up Education City at his request (well sort of) and I was quite frankly gobsmacked at his maths ability. I had to put the level up twice so now I only have one more change before I have to pay again. Hopefully this will keep him busy for a little while. He obviously has no problem with numbers and I probably shouldn’t have been suprised as we are really a family of mathematicians.

I saw a blog post earlier that explains in a better way what the mood is like in the home educaion community and how this might ultimately affect those that don’t. The writer has given me permission to post this here but if you want to read the original entry its here http://www.swsurrey-home-ed.co.uk/wordpress/2009/01/20/another-consultation-another-rant/

This latest move by the British government may seem to be of interest only to home educators but hear me out, it goes much deeper than that. The law says that parents are responsible for ensuring that their children receive a suitable education. Of course that’s fine because it stops anyone successfully suing their child’s school or local authority if said child reaches 16 functionally illiterate. What they don’t want is people opting out of the system and the social conditioning it includes. Hitler outlawed home education for just that reason, he understood that to control the minds of the people you have to get children away from their parents as early as possible so they can be trained to conform, to obey and to believe whatever their masters want them to. Can there be any doubt that NeuLabour wants that kind of control? The home education option could safely be ignored when there were only a handful of hippies and the parents of the occasional prodigy doing it, but it’s getting too popular, too many children are slipping through the net, and what’s worse, word is getting out that they receive a better education than their schooled peers and are happier too.

Today started off so well, we were all feeling so much better and we went into town to buy some bits and the photo was to show the light downpour that occured while we were out. I came home to find that the government has decided they will raise the fifth (I think) consulation on home education in the 3 years we have been home educaing. They have spent thousands of the publics money and just because they are not getting the control over us that they want.

I am so angry right now.

Every Child Matters?