Peter won’t be amused

I should think that Naked Blog will be spitting feathers at the news of Butlins trying to bring bingo “up to date” with some new rhyming slang. I have no idea why there’s a need to update the phrases, but then, I’m not renowned for having my finger on the pulse of these things.

Another new page

It looks like the floodgates have finally cracked open a bit – and as a result, I’ve also added a piece on Writer’s Block to the section on thoughts.

Big Brother? Neigh – not in this house

Now maybe I’m showing my age a bit (and the already well-known fact that I’m a sad geek on occasion) but I’m quite amazed that the National Trust allowed Channel 4 to advertise Big Brother 4 by painting a Big Brother Eye buy the White Horse of Uffington. Quite what made them think it would be a good idea, feck only knows. I’d have imagined that C4 provided them with some much-needed money for it, but it turns out they accepted £2000 for it. Well, what a bargain.

Smack is bad for you

Part of today’s news has been that child-minders will now not be allowed to smack children in their care – even if the childminder already has written permission from the parents to do so. They’re also not allowed to smoke while looking after children – which, knowing some of the little sods darlings I’ve come across seems like a particularly cruel punishment on the child-minders.

I must admit, I’m not sure about the entire concept of being anti-smacking. I can understand the concept, and the fact that there are people (Parents, teachers, child-minders, whatever) who will always go over the top on things like smacking etc., but at the same time, is it right to completely remove it from being an available route?

I’m not a parent – but I’ve lived with families, have friends with children of all ages, and been involved with helping to bring up a couple along the way. Within that realm of knowledge, I believe that all children need to have some form of established limits – it’s part of the entire process of growing up. I don’t think that smacking, corporal punishment, or whatever other niceties there now are for it is necessarily the way forwards – but there always needs to be some kind of “If you misbehave, this will happen”, an established line. It’s always struck me that too many children now have parents that are frightened of establishing these lines, however they’re done, because they’ll be seen as physically abusing their child – and somewhere in there is a very fucked up piece of logic. There’s a difference between one smack for being a little bastard, and prolonged physical abuse – and the keyword, I believe, is “prolonged”. Too many times you hear parents saying “I’m going to get really angry in a minute”, and the expression on the child’s face eloquently says “Yeah right – it’s never happened yet”.

So is there a reason for the ban to be in place? Yes, in some ways there is – there’ve always been people who would rather batter the shit out of someone smaller than them. But at the same time that’s why there are laws about things like abuse, assault, and bodily harm. But to remove the ability completely? In honesty, I don’t think that’s right at all.

It’s getting hot in here

Following on from various other sites, I went off and took the Dantes Inferno test. These are the results:

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

New pages

Yes, it’s been a while since new pages were added into the main site of d4d – but today’s the day for the start of the renaissance. There’s going to be a small amount of twiddling of pages too in the near future, but that’s something for future revelations.

Today though, there’s a new picture in the Public Art section, and also a new page in the photos section, with some of the plants I’ve got here. I’ve also finally been writing some of the bigger pieces again, so they’ll get uploaded once they’re finished.

Today’s posts have been brought to you courtesy of Tracy Chapman, Massive Attack, Leftfield and the word “Bugger”.

Coming Soon

Via Gert, one of the projects for the next week (starting Bank Holiday Monday) will be Acerbia’s on-line Seven Deadly sins. Considering that I’m off to see the bank that shall not be named on Tuesday morning to sort out quite why they’re so fucking incompetent and unprofessional, I’m going to stick with Anger/Wrath for my performance piece.