The brainwashing of children.

From an article on the BBC website today:

"When parents separate, where the children live, how much time they spend with Mum or Dad, can be hard to agree.

Sometimes a child starts refusing to see their other parent.
This autumn, social workers who look after a child's interests in the family courts are being given new guidelines to help with these cases.
For the first time this will consider the possibility a child has been deliberately turned against one parent, by the other
 Parental alienation, as it's called, will be just one of the options a social worker might consider.
It's a controversial concept which the courts have been trying to grapple with for years in cases where the parents are locked into entrenched legal action over contact.
There is no consensus and not a great deal of research, so how might it be considered by courts here?
The intensity or frequency of behaviour might be one of the ways this is set apart from the disagreements that are often part of separation.
"Think of a child experiencing a separation, the mother or father bad mouthing, or withholding warmth and affection unless they agree with an argument," says Sarah Parsons of the Children and Families Court Advisory Service.
"If it's repeated it can have an invasive, intrusive effect on wellbeing. A child can think the only way to stay safe is to side with one parent and reject the other."
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See more HERE

UK Panorama 2018

Carnival 2018 in full swing.

Ready for Carnival.

Owl at sunset.

Proms

Andrew O'Hagan: Grenfell Tower. Piss poor journalism.

The publication of this thing does no one any favours except RBKC councilors, Pagett Brown and Fielding Mellen in particular and  of course O'Hagans bank account.

What is wrong with it:

The timing of this publication, before any inquiry has been concluded and before any results are published demonstrates an arrogance of monumental proportions on the part of O'Hagan.

It is biased conjecture at best.

It fails to acknowledge absolute facts regarding the cladding of the building in favour of defending the councilors who. for whatever reasons, allowed the work to be carried out. The argument that RBKC's use of dangerous cladding was ok because everyone else was doing it is laughable.

It casually lays blame on the Fire Service for the number of deaths. It does not point out that, but for the cladding mistakes, the Fire Service, having put out the fire on the fourth floor would have gone home. Job Done.

O'Hagan is so keen to defend and praise Pagett Brown and Fielding Mellen and others that he has completely missed the big story. I would point him in the direction of Companies House records.

I could go on and on but I won't beyond saying that the entire thing is so flawed and biased that it even casts doubt on the facts that it gets right.

It is a monumental piece of 'up my own arse, look how clever I am, journalism' with no concern for truth or justice and a very keen enthusiasm for Town Hall brown nosing.

For the record, I lived in the shadow of Grenfell at the time of the fire. I watched it from the start. I experienced first hand the horrors and I experienced first hand the inadequacy of RBKC in its response.

Tesco to remove dates from stores.

Tesco is to stop stocking dates in its stores.

A spokesperson said that this would stop uneaten dates being thrown away by consumers.

etc etc etc

The many faces of tax and benefits fraud.

It is easy to assume that benefit fraud is perpetrated by 'pond life and scum'.
This is not the case.

I've spent the past 12 months looking into the abuse of benefits in this area and find that the benefit cheat is more likely to be someone in work, who, rather than being on the breadline feels that they deserve more than they earn and to that end fiddles council tax or single parent childcare benefits.

Benefit frauds and council tax frauds are frequently carried out by individuals who think that they are above suspicion and therefore free from detection.  They are 'nice' educated folk whose nasty habits (they hope) will never come to light.

The chances are that someone standing next to you at the school gates, sitting accross the table at a dinner party, living two doors away or up the street is abusing the system. Even that nice police officer next door.

It is easy to do.

Thanks to the internet and Open Source information it is now getting easier to detect.

more later....

Fleur Dumal, the muse from hell.

 
 Illustration for Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. Odilon Redon 1890.

Jan Nieupjur paid a rare visit yesterday. We sat in the sun, shared a few beers and a few memories but it wasn't long before he turned our thoughts to the muse:

"I've met a new muse ." He informed me.

"Her name is Fleur Dumal, she is the most selfish human being I have ever met; lies constantly, would sell her mother for a glass of wine and is totally untrustworthy... In essence the perfect muse.

She is an artist without a shred of creativity or talent but has a phenomenal delusional self belief in her greatness."

Hmmmm. Sounds familiar

"She wants to write Tristan and to that end could she perhaps pen an occasional post for the blog. Would you indulge her, it might be fun."

I of course, in the interests of equality, agreed and will be posting her occasional thread entitled: 'Life in the pits'.

Should be interesting.

The smallest library in the world.

Love only bicycle.

It is without doubt the most photographed bicycle in London: parked outside the pink mews house that served as Kiera Knightly's home in 'Love actually' it has featured in thousands of photographs and selfies by tourists from around the planet.

Sent from my iPhone

Snow shoes in Notting Hill.