The Doctor is in the House

Dr Who is back on British television screens for a fourth series under the guiding hand of Russell Davies, the third with David Tennant as the Doctor. Sadly for American fans, it will be available sometime in the future. Despite my best efforts, I cannot find out when this might be, or if it will be available for viewing on the BBC iPlayer.

With a new series will also come a new line of toys. After tonight’s episode I can expect that we will have at least one Adipose in the house. If we don’t buy it, I’m sure a well-meaning close relative will. As anyone who has seen the first episode with know, these new creatures will be the cheapest to manufacture in everything from hard plastic to soft stuffed toys. I could pretty much make one.

The Wrong Favourite

We picked the wrong favourite.

Today was the Grand National, the most valuable and biggest betting horse race in the world. Like many other people in this country, we never bet on the horses except the Grand National. Normally we put anything from £4 to £10 on the race.

This year we staked £25. We put £13 on the joint favourite Cloudy Lane and £12 on Hedgehunter, the 2005 winner. Unfortunately the other joint favourite, Comply or Die, won the race. Cloudy Lane finished 6th and Hedgehunter back in 13th.  The only good thing is that it didn’t cost us anything. The Unnamed Woman found a free £25 bet on the Internet. We also found a free £5 bet in the Daily Mirror that had to be placed by mobile phone text, but it didn’t take. I never got the text reply with the information to place the bet.

So we didn’t win anything this year, but at least we didn’t lose anything either.

Family Matters

The most senior family court judge in southwest England has diagnosed the cause of the almost every evil in society today. Sir Paul Coleridge blames pretty much everything on the breakdown of the family, which he labels a cancer.

Though he is certainly an expert on these matters, this is not something that requires such a specialist to diagnose. But even though he is stating the obvious, it is something that the Government, with it’s family unfriendly policies, is ignoring. It is not just no-fault divorce. Mr Justice Coleridge includes the “meltdown” of the parent/child relations as well.

So you combine no-fault divorce with all-fault discipline (given the restrictions imposed by the law, compounded with the tendency to assume any discipline exceeds those restrictions) and you have a recipe for disaster. Disaster is certainly what we have in this country. Disaster is what we see every day in schools – with a combination of kids who can’t draw their family tree and as they are shifted throughout the week from one parent to another, or sometimes a relative, or a former partner of a parent, with no consistent structure in their life.

If that’s what it’s like in relatively sedate rural areas, think about what other educators face each day in the more urban environments. Several years ago I taught in a city of about 70,000. I was talking to a head of year who was sending out congratulatory letters to parents of children who were performing above expectations in at least five subjects and also letters to parents of children for whom significant concerns had been raised in at least five subjects. As he was looking through the envelopes, he noticed that all of the former were sent to “Mr and Mrs” and all of the latter were sent to single parents or adults of two difference surnames.

This echoes Sir Paul’s statement, “I am not saying every broken family produces dysfunctional children but I am saying that almost every dysfunctional child is the product of a broken family.”