WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Marilyn]

Bravo!

[Stanley]

Very well deserved. Nice to see hard work and application rewarded.
I've remembered my flu jab at 09:08 and have taken the necessary precautions!

[Tizer]

A fantastic achievement by Barlick, David! Best town in the north-west....will it be Best town in England next perhaps?!

[Pluggy]

[quote="Stanley"
I've remembered my flu jab at 09:08 and have taken the necessary precautions![/quote]

b*ll*x.... I forgot mine.

[Stanley]

Hard luck Plugs, I was back home by 9:10. The nurse told me I would get the usual side effects and a slightly sore arm from the jab. I told her I never had either! She looked a bit surprised. Perhaps some people complain more than others.....
Clock change today so usual faff of setting all the clocks....

[Thomo]

It really is good to know that our Town is considered by others to be just a bit different and special, most of us who were born here have always appreciated it. And there are many now who have moved here from elsewhere and fallen in love with it. More than once it has been the "butt of jokes", but it is still here, sound and sure. Other places are famous for various reasons, cakes, pies and other confectionary, or people of notoriety, fine buildings and historic events. When I make applications for the Heritage events, it always gives a great deal of personal satisfaction when I make the point that it was here that a large portion of what is now called "Aerospace" has its roots. More recently it was home to the largest bed manufacturing site in Europe, not bad for no mans land is it? A small number of they who call this place home have every right to feel pride in this latest accolade, the Men and Women who promote this Town, and they who with their tireless efforts bring pleasure to all of its inhabitants. Well done Barlick.

[PanBiker]

The trailer mounted Rolls Royce Merlin engine being run up at Bancroft this afternoon.

[Bodger]

A decent bit of kit, moving a 75 m l , x 55 m. w x 30m. h, rig weighing 14, 000 tonnes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqPoQD3vOZE

[Stanley]

Well, that blew ten minutes away Bodge! You watch the same videos as me... It's wonderful to see what determined men with the right skills and equipment can do. You've reminded me of a day over thirty years ago when West Marton Dairy were changing over from bottling milk to making cheese they sold the two big bottle washers back to the manufacturers for refurbishing, Dawsons at Heckmondwyke. They weighed about 30 tons each and had to be lifted four feet and moved out from under the roof across various sloped surfaces and the wagon dock to a place where the crane could get to them to load them for transport. We speculated how they would do it until on the day appointed a Morris Minor pickup loaded with gear turned up with two old blokes in the cab. They were followed by two wagons loaded with sleepers and a gang of men who filled the bottle dock with sleepers to make a reasonably level platform. Then over a couple of days we watched the miracle where these two old men jacked up the washer until it was level with the front floor. Then they rigged up a couple of Trewhellah ratchet winches and slowly dragged the first washer out of the building using a large tree root for an anchor. No rush, no sweat and completely successful. Over the years since I have had several jobs like that and it still amazes me what can be done with a bit of thought and often minimal equipment. The Trewhellah winch and the Tirfor cable puller are two of the most useful tools ever invented!

[Stanley]

Just noticed that I am still on BST so I have gone to the control panel and changed it.

[Stanley]

That's better!

[Stanley]

The 90 minute programme on BBC1 TV last night about the Baby P case. A good piece of investigative journalism but as I watched it I kept wondering who was really to blame. Then I realised that this was not the point, it is the trap that Cameron fell into when he thumped the dispatch box and politicised the matter. His object of course was to deflect any blame that might have been laid at the door of the system. My conclusion after watching the programme was (and this applies to the current investigation into child sexual abuse) to hunt down the flaws in the system and address them. Things like firewalls between databases and circumstances like the consultants working at St Anns under the aegis of Great Ormond Street having no case histories to inform their diagnosis.
This does not mean that culpable people should escape the consequences but until we address the causes and consequence, rather than the blame, we will have no clear picture about who the guilty people are. The overwhelming feeling after watching the programme is that the people best qualified to get to the truth, the people who are brought in after the event to do the Serious Case Review ought to be involved much earlier and on a wider scale but of course this is expansive and to be affective would need new money. Complicated isn't it.....

[Nolic]

I thought the programme was a brave step for the makers and for the BBC to give up 1 1/2 hours of prime time viewing to it. There were clearly major cover ups not least around the role of a well loved institution - Gt Ormond Street - but the surpression of evidence at the GMC hearing of the doctor who supposedly missed Peter's broken back was inexcusable. Ofsted came out of it better than I thought despite the obvious lies told to the Parliamentary Committee on Children by my previous boss that inspection evidence is destroyed after 3 months but then again all the top players there are long gone. The question arises "Has the child protection system improved as a result of lessons from Baby P?" Sadly the answer is no..... the case of Daniel Pelka in Coventry is just as harrowing as Baby P ....but then again agencies have learned to protect themselves before the mucky stuff hits the fan http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rkers.html Nolic

[Marilyn]

What do you think the solution to such tragic outcomes is in terms of the current system, Nolic? Where do you think the weakness lies? What would you like to see improved or changed to ensure better outcomes for vulnerable young people?

[Bodger]

http://www.livescience.com/48418-antarc ... vered.html
Note book from Scotts expedition

[Stanley]

Comrade, the paragraph that struck me in that report was
"Lawyers for Cumbria County Council tried to suppress all information about the death of Poppi Worthington on the grounds it would be unfair to reveal shortcomings of public agencies, it was revealed yesterday."
'Unfair' only to those who are culpable. If there is no transparency there is no possibility of identifying flaws in the system and rectifying them. I see the problem as being that fear of blame is the focus instead of constant improvement of the system based on experience. It is an incredibly complicated and sensitive area (Like CSA) and mistakes will be made. Witch hunts and politicising don't help. Intelligent assessment and fine tuning would.
Maz asks good questions. Am I right in suspecting that resources are a major factor? The other parallel which strikes me is the way the profession of social worker has been downgraded (like teachers) and I'm cynical enough to think that this is to reduce status and wage-earning power.
The Woolf affair is another area where in-fighting in Westminster is hampering justice. My impression is that the government is desperate to have a 'safe pair of hands' and the best way of ensuring this is to choose someone inside the loop.

[Nolic]

The answer to Maz is complex and largely revolves around resources but not simply "not enough to go round." It boils down to what as a nation we value and the care of young and old alike is low down compared to ensuring that wealth remains with the privileged few and is not used for the greater good. We will never have a health or social services that meet need as long as we fail to value in real terms what they do. Some improvements in child care can be made around the edges and since my day one of the major things we have lost is local knowledge and good relationships between local professionals that have confidence in each others abilities and skills.
Social workers in the field or residential are not valued and are expected to go into work every day with the possibility of a Peter Connelly/Danial Pelka/Rochdale/Rotherham/Bradford/Keighley witch hunt that leads to a breakdown or in the case of the Hammersmith staff -death threats.........all for a salary of less than a police constable. Nolic

[Thomo]

Follow this link for a new RNLI video of the wrecking of the Rohilla:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRgYujXx ... e=youtu.be

[Bruff]

Yes to all of that, and by way of illustration the going hourly rate for a dog walker in this country is generally somewhere between 10 and 15 quid an hour. This is somewhat more that the 7 quid something an hour minimum wage the carer gets to wipe your relative’s bum in their old age, or the child-minder to look after your kids. I’ve never quite understood why people tolerate the paying of the person who walks, or looks after, a dog more than the person who looks after a child or a relative. But then I’ve often reckoned that a child being hit by a parent in the street would elicit at most a benign ‘tut’ from very many onlookers whereas the same happening to a dog would cause almost universal outrage.

I thought the documentary was important in illustrating the complexity of these matters and the plea for us all to ‘grow up’ was well made. Like it or not, some parents are woefully lacking in the ability to look after a child or indeed harbour homicidal feelings toward them. Mercifully, this is rare but perhaps counter-intuitively, this rareness does not make the job of spotting these cases easier, rather it makes it harder. Tabloid-led finger-pointing, scapegoating and back-covering and political point-scoring, suggesting complex problems have easy ‘common sense’ answers serves no one, but is rather par for the course in this country, unless we ‘grow up’.

Richard Broughton

[Big Kev]

https://www.facebook.com/andrewrgilmour Andrew (Giz) is starting a new venture, https://www.facebook.com/PendleMusicAcademy, I think it will be great for Barlick, as there is a vast wealth of musical talent just waiting to be unleashed.

[Tizer]

This is somewhat more that the 7 quid something an hour minimum wage the carer gets....

My father's care home is owned by the local district council but the care services are sub-contracted to a private firm. The firm charges him £20 an hour but I doubt the carers see much of that 20 quid. Same rate for cleaning, shopping etc.

[Stanley]

Some thoughtful posts on caring there... thank you.
There was a news report yesterday about the pay of carers which pointed out that whilst they were paid the minimum wage by statute they were not paid for travelling time between jobs and that this brought their overall pay down to below the legal level. In some cases cited it was just over £4 an hour for the whole day. This is derisory. There is the added disadvantage that they have to provide their own transport and the mileage allowance doesn't cover all the cost so in effect the carers are subsidising the system out of their low wage. So, to take up Richard's point about dog walkers carers can get a quarter of their rate!
Nolic's point about resources is important. I know that throwing money at a problem is not a complete answer but there is little doubt that some extra funding could mean more staff and reduced workloads for those already in post. For many years a complicated con trick has been going on where on the one hand central government appears to be acceding to demands for local control of many essential services by giving the local authority the responsibility but at the same time has reduced overall funding to the authorities from central government on the grounds that they must make internal savings, use reserves and allocate their own priorities. This is in fact a cynical reduction in funding for essential services. The forecast in Pendle is that if this funding trend carries on the council will be unable to function effectively in five years....
I'd like to repeat my conviction that one factor is that we have denigrated the professional skills of the social workers and reduced their status. This is often accompanied by what is effectively a reduction in wages by reducing the number of posts and thus increasing the workload. This is one of the reasons why recruitment is falling. (much the same syndrome in the teaching profession as well)
All this goes back to something I have banged on about for years. We know enough about outcomes to be able to predict that underfunding in essential social services like care, primary education and job creation for school leavers eventually leads to exponential increases in spending on subsequent health issues and public order budgets. Further, because we have neglected the feedstock for the labour market we have a less qualified workforce with the skills to run today's technologies, hence the catastrophic drop in productivity in what looks on the surface to be a healthy labour market. This has a knock-on effect in that the tax take per head falls and surprise surprise, funding for these essential services has to be cut, thus ensuring a downwards spiral.
All this in one of the richest economies in the world. I am forced to conclude that there will be no improvement until the priorities of central government are adjusted to take account of the facts. I see no sign of any moves towards this happening.

[Stanley]

Ann Coffey is on R4 at 07:30 this morning talking about her report on Greater Manchester and Child Sexual Exploitation.

[Marilyn]

One thing I did find a bit freaky a few years ago when we visited UK, was discovering that a relative of my husband's family had...at the age of 17...been discharged from hospital with her baby within 12 hours of giving birth...having not even been shown how to bath the infant. I understand the reasoning behind discharging well mothers and well babies early ( gone are the days when we had to lie in bed for a month!), but where is the obligation of care to ensure that this young Mum can care for her child? As it turned out, she did have the support of her mother ( although her mother is legally blind, so cannot drive, and lives about 30 miles away). Mother and child were housed in one of those thoroughly soul destroying high-rise block of flats, full of poverty stricken single mums.
I think we need to empower young people to make better choices in regard to parenthood and its long term consequences. This young lass, like many, had never even had a job between leaving school and changing nappies! ( and now, a few years later, she is still on her own, has three kids and hasn't celebrated her 21st birthday yet).
All terribly sad that she has defined her own life in this way, simply by making poor choices.
The message needs to get out that it is not cool to be a teenage mum/dad.

[Pluggy]

This is somewhat more that the 7 quid something an hour minimum wage the carer gets....

My father's care home is owned by the local district council but the care services are sub-contracted to a private firm. The firm charges him £20 an hour but I doubt the carers see much of that 20 quid. Same rate for cleaning, shopping etc.

Its the difference between running a business and income. I charge a similar amount to my customers, The profit (What I earn) is a fraction of the turnover (what my customers pay).