Moving music from ex-offenders

Went to a Changing Tunes concert last night. Wow, was it good, and boy, did it reiterate what a mess our prison system is (though I have to say no-one from the organisation was critical of the system per se, it was just apparent in my thoughts afterwards, based on some of the things said and unsaid).

Changing Tunes is a charity that uses music to aid the rehabilitation of prisoners and ex-offenders. That's how their website puts it. What we saw was a group of fantastic people really touching peoples lives, through sharing their love of music with a group of people many in society want to simply ignore. The staff team of CT played together, along with a few people who have benefited from their work. The standard of music from both staff and ex-offenders was amazing, as are the statistics on re-offending (see the CT website for more on that).

I mentioned "unsaid" things earlier, and here is one of them. This is a charity, run on a tight budget. It reduces re-offending rates significantly. There are similar success stories elsewhere. Yet our prison service still centres around locking people away for years in poor conditions, then disgorging them onto a by-now alien society, and acting surprised when they turn up again fairly soon thereafter having offended again. Isn't it time we started seriously investing in programmes like Changing Tunes, investing in education in prisons, investing in schemes that help prisoners upon release. Why don't programmes that show consistently reduced re-offending rates get shouted about from the rooftops and funded to the hilt by the government?

Maybe CT don't want government funding, requiring that degree of independence (I could well understand that position). Regardless, it just highlights the sorry state of affairs we are in. Prison population is incredibly high, yet we refuse to acknowledge that the system needs radical change if this is ever to change.

Blairs new anti-terror police take to the streets

In a bid to deal with the rising threat of terrorism, gun crime, grafitti, bunking off school and all the other evil things that would be rampant on our streets without our politicians keeping us safe, our Tone has hired storm troopers to patrol the capitals streets. You can see this one using his stop-and-search-for-no-flaming-reason-at-all powers, as this child should obviously be in school learning how to be greedy enough to keep Golden Brown happy, but instead he is wandering teh streets of London looking happy. Tsk, happy. I ask you. How will we keep the country running if people start getting all happy?

Actually this particular storm trooper was patrolling outside County Hall. Perhaps trying to track down that dengerous rebel Ken Livingstone, but his intelligence is a bit out of date, the info. that Ken left years ago and is now in a glittery building down the road hasn't quite got through. Must have come from MI5...

I never thought Blair going would be a bad thing but....

...Golden Brown is really starting to scare me. BBC news article sets out some of his views on education. Yet more tinkering at the edges, and essential lots more of the same, generally the sort of things most politicians spout. My concern is just how wedded "education" is becoming to "career" "aspirations" and "potential" (otherwise known as "money" "money" and "money". Gordon is not looking for a system that yields bright, inquisitive people coming out of our education system, with the necessary basic skills for life, an interest in learning and the ability to think for themselves, rather economy slaves. We are determined that continuous economic growth is a panacea, and the only way it can continue is well training people being churned out of the sausage factory. Education doesn't come into it.

I wonder what "no place in the new Britain we seek for complacency and no room for inadequate skills, low aspirations" means. Would aspiring to be a gardener be a low aspiration? Aspiring to being a full time parent? Aspiring to work few hours and live frugally in order to free up your time for more fulfilling activities than work? How about aspiring to work in the charitable sector?.....

I rather suspect all Gordon wants for our children is to aspire to earn as much as possible, buy ever more "stuff", and keep the economy growing.

Harbour replaced by car park replaced by harbour... eh?

During a walking tour of Breda, I discovered the local authority there have decided to reopen the harbour, what a good idea. But impossible of course, since it was filled in in the '60s and an underground car park built across much of it. Yet wait, this is the Netherlands, engineering watercourses is a way of life, and they want their waterfront back, so the car park gets the heave-ho (with parking relocated to a more suitable location) and the canal gets reinstated, with harbour allowing pleasure boats etc to moor up, locals and tourists to stroll or cycle the banks, and this prime city centre area to look luverly and have a sense of place, rather than just being a car park and grim road. More information on the project (in English) can be found here. You will find on that page the heartwarming (for me anyway) phrase "Plenty of space will be set aside for pedestrians and cyclists in the area" UK planners take note - they actually mean that.

Belgian Drivers

This blog has been moved. This post can now be found at http://wightweirdos.co.uk/ww/2007/06/belgian-drivers/

I fought the law

Just finished Dan Kieran's book "I Fought the Law" which I stumbled on in WHSmith at the Port of Dover, having realised I was short of holiday reading. Great book - worrying and liberating at the same time. Think it may be one of those which has an impact on life - not quite sure what/how yet. Will probably write more later, but for now, go and buy a copy - it's worth it (but only if you can afford it. If there's any question, there's always the library).

Take turns

Father and I just decided we need a new approach to roadworks and other situations where lanes merge. The most efficient system is to use both lanes until the point when they must merge, then merge in turn. Unfortunately our mentality is to join the queue straight away, which actually leads to an inefficient system, with multiple merge points and porr utilisation of road space, hence longer ques and road rage as a few drivers actually carry on to teh end. One person cannot change this, and would just become a road rage target.

So, how about a mass advertising campaign, followed by signs at such places announcing - USE BOTH LANES --- STAY IN LANE - then - MERGE IN TURN - at the end? I've seen this done in one spot in Edinburgh (never suggested it was an original idea!), and largely it works OK. Change the culture overall and I think it would be a stunning success.

Anti-bike culture

Just posted on the family blog about how good cycle infrastructure is in the Netherlands (after a slightly petty gripe about signage at one junction) and that improving ours in the UK would almost certainly see a modal shift from car to bike. What I'm not sure about is how you change an anti-bike culture. The Dutch drive sensibly around cyclists, are tolerant of them making mistakes (and misdemeanours), I would wager there are few calls for compulsory tests, insurance or tax on bikes as are often heard in the UK. Cycling is deeply embedded in Dutch culture though, and we have lost that now. I'd like to hope that would start to change if we got to the stage where we had decent facilities for cyclists and hence more people using bikes. But I'm not sure. Oh, and before anyone suggests no-one will cycle in the UK because its hilly, and the Netherlands is Pancake-flat, I don't expect us to reach NL numbers of cyclists or distances, but for many trips a bike makes sense, and for many more it would make sense with some major or even minor improvements to our infrastructure.

Oh, and by the way, Dutch roads are excellent by and large. Driving here is not unpleasant at all. Just often unnecessary.

Q

Discovered today I rather like the British art of queuing and similar niceties, but not the aggressive attitude towards those who flout our conventions. For example in the Netherlands, France and Belgium if you want to change lanes you pretty much just signal and move into traffic in the next lane. No-one flashes, swears, tries to ram you etc (one boy racer in a tarted up piece of *** broke the mould but I'll let that go). This rather laid back approach generally works, but I do miss people flashing to let you out, waving me across a junction or whatever.