Your ideas
If you hear or read something in the news or on the PM blog that you think needs more discussion or doesn't chime with your experience - comment below or email us.
We're always interested in new ideas, but there are a few things we're currently looking at:
'Obami' language
Brian Barker told us about a new global language being developed - that's been affectionately nicknamed 'obami'. Is it true? We're wondering if is there a need or desire for a new international language?
Economy 7 electricity
Do you use the cheaper night-time electricity tariff? Ecomonical, but could it also link to the news that Britain may see power shortages in coming years?
If you have knowledge of either of these - drop us a line.
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I would love us to examine anew the 'blame culture' which appears to permeate all aspects of our lives. As a teacher, I am constantly dealing with complaints from irate parents who want to find someone (anyone, it would appear, but their child....) to blame for their child's exam failure/bad behaviour/poor report etc. We heard it again today, when the Sun spokesman maintained that someone (ie S Shoesmith) must take responsibility for the tragic death of Baby P. Well, to me it appears blindingly simple: the adults who killed him are to blame. Or are they somehow to be exempt from blame because they are ill-educated, deprived or some other situation which is not apparently of their own making? Why do we as a society seem so happy to adopt a morally relativist stance with regard to perpetrators of offences, and then try to find an educated, articulate person to blame rather than the individual (or individuals in theis case) who actually committed the crime?
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Obami will have a lot of work to do to catch up with Esperanto.
Esperanto is now within the top 100 languages, out of 6,000 worldwide, according to the CIA factbook. It is the 17th most used language in Wikipedia, and in use by Skype, Firefox and Facebook.
Native Esperanto speakers - people who have spoken Esperanto from birth - include George Soros, Ulrich Brandenber, the new German Ambassador to NATO, and World Champion Chess Player, Susan Polger.
The World Esperanto Association enjoys consultative relations with both the United Nations and UNESCO.
Evidence can be seen at http://www.lernu.net and an interestin video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LV9XU
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My mother's house has Economy 7 (or its successor), for heating and water. I understood that the tariff barred people adding other applicances (all items are hard-wired into the meter; there are no 3 pin sockets to plug in other items). So I'm a little puzzled how your contributor is able to use washing machines etc, unless she just means using the hot water heated by that tariff, and it's reheating while she's using the washing machine.
Is it still available for new customers?
Anyhow, one reason for this tariff was to use electricity from the "base load", that which runs 24/7, as the modern parlance goes, such as nuclear, coal; there has to be a large percentage of these in the daytime to cover needs; but apart from a couple of storage schemes, there is all this electricity being generated which has to be used somehow during the small hours - hence the development of the tariff.
I cannot see how this would be affected by power shortages. You cannot shut down the base load generators every night. If there were insufficient power generated compared to demand, there would have to be power cuts like those in the 1970's, i.e. on a schedule so all have some day, some night time cuts, so as to keep the base load usage. If there was insufficient coal, for example, then some base load stations would have to close for a prolonged time, not just overnight.
However, encouraging people to use power during the night, for heating water (wonder how it compares in price (financial, to the environment etc) to heating the water as part of a gas central heating system?), would help even out the overall power consumption, which would help the electric companies, and perhaps even the environment. The extra generators used to top-up the supply during the day are generally expensive to run due to their very nature of being small, local, and quick to spin up and shut down, to cover spikes in demand; if the demand were evened out over the whole day, then these generators would not be needed so much of the time.
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Following up on monday's Somali pirates story, I would like to hear more about the background to this issue.
I briefly heard on another R4 programme that the Somali people used to be largely dependent upon fishing, but that their coastal waters have been fished out by foreign factory vessels.
This re-casts the whole miserable 'failed state' picture of Somalia that we have been fed for the last 15 years, from the default western viewpoint of 'hopeless, backward african nation', to 'people whose way of life has been stolen from them doing what they have to in order to survive'.
Some thoughtful comment on this situation would put current reporting on a sounder footing.
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re the policeman who wanted baby p taken into care but was said to have 'agreed' Social Service's decision. As a GP I went with my health visitor to a case conference. She had known the family under discussion 8 years I had known them 6. The social work case worker had known them a few months. We were listened to, grudgingly, then the 'chair' simpered 'shall we vote on it?' The room had several doors all around it and at this point they all opened and about 20 people spilled into the room. None knew the family. All worked for Social services (in what capacity we never knew)they all voted the way the chair wanted. So, the only 2 people in the room with any real knowledge of the family were outvoted 27 to 2.
I never attended case conferences after that. Partly because I was too busy looking after my 2,000 patients to waste time attending meetings where no one took any notice of what I said but also because I feared they would use my very presence at a meeting where I disagreed with what was decided as a rubber stamp to endorse their own decisions. I think that may have been what happened to this policeman; he was overruled and then his attendance at the meeting was taken as proof of his consent to what was decided at it.
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A friend suggested that I listen to a new feature named UpsharesDownshares but I cannot find any reference! Can anyone help?
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I want to know why supermarkets are still packaging meat, vegetables & fruit in plastic. Sainsbury's do use some rigid cardboard but that's about it. I spend a lot of time taking this plastic to the recycling centre but , adding to pollution levels whereas, if they used cardboard, I could take it to the recycling bins at any supermarket using my little flat feet ! We are still just playing at recycling - witness the current crisis caused by foreign customers not wanting to buy our paper/plastic waste any more. Why the heck don't we build the facilities and re-use it ourselves ? Presumably we import nice clean packaging materials & paper in the first place ... This is not rocket science, just common sense.
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Hello chrisf1972
Welcome to the blog. Have a listen to the PM programme at around 5.32pm.
And this should give you some background.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pm/2008/10/nils_slot_at_1732.shtml#commentsanchor
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/pm/2008/11/in_tonights_upshares_downshare.shtml
Hope all is revealed.
Jen
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Greatescape2008(7),
There are always problems with these ideas. Around here (SW London), we are asked *not* to recycle pizza boxes because the grease affects the recycling process. Similar "contamination" issues may occur if other food goods are packed in card.
Similarly, the plastic bags get "contaminated", and thus difficult to recycle (if any facilities exist).
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The IFS report released on 24/10/08 hsa brought up again the issue of 'birth penalty' in school admissions regarding summer-born children. I've got an amazing story regarding this- my son is not just the youngest. He also LOST a whole school year when we moved to England from N. Ireland. His birthday is July 28th so, according to the N. Ireland admissions cut-off of July 1st, he started school after his 5th birthday. Primary 1 (equivalent of reception) went well. Then his life became hell. He was put into year 2 on arriving in England and he struggled. No other option was ever considered. He's been through special needs assessment, he's had stress-induced headaches, he's pulled chunks of hair out. He was seen as having developmental delays. He's made fantastic progress though. BUT he'll never catch up on the year 1 basics- the building blocks of foundation learning. To contrast- a child from his primary 1 class moved to England just after us. January birthday so he went to year 1. Am I mistaken in thinking that there is a very grave injustice here? Where's the national curriculum here?
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I have economy heating which is so useless I'd like to shoot the person who thought it up. I have to know about 48hrs in advance what the weather's going to be like in order to plan for it. eg if it's going to be colder, I'll turn up the knob that tells the heater to store more heat overnight, and the next day it should start spewing it out, except it doesn't seem to do anything until the night AFTER that, and on the 2nd day I realise it's way too hot and have to turn it down. Which it takes another 48 hours to do.
The second knob is supposed to give you control over how quickly it spews out the heat. Except you can't choose what time it starts. If you set it high, it spews out heat quickly until it's all used up by mid-morning and you freeze the rest of the day. If you turn it the other way it spews it out slowly but constantly, but still has nothing left by 10pm anyway.
It's of no use whatsoever to a person who goes out to work and therefore needs it to be warm in the morning for a short while when they get up and then again in the evening until quite late when they go to bed. It's heating my house in my absence and I end up spending my evenings swaddled under jumpers and blankets, putting off the inevitable moment when I'll have to put on the booster switch. Does anyone actually have any good experiences with this kind of heating? Or have any tips how to get round its silly timing and spewing systems? It's unfathomable!
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dear all
can someone please enlighten me wether our national debt is greater or smaller than other nations vis a vis our gdp
and for good measure wether our total tax take is greater or smaller than other countries
i would like to work out who is telling me porkies.
i have heard experts say very different things to all our politicians.
ian
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