Monthly Archives: November 2006

The Youth of the Nation

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The modern day youth has gained a reputation of being a menace
youth crime
Growing up in an age of mobile phones, mp3 players, broadband Internet, Internet banking, and DVDs, & information is at your fingertips.
But with this has come the youth that hangs around outside shops with a group of mates at the weekend stereotypically wearing a hoodie and drinking cheap white lightning

The UK government tried to tackle the most problematic youths by introducing ASBOs (Anti Social Behaviour Orders) in the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act and has updated this several times since then.
ASBOs don’t necessarily just apply to youths, but largely they have been the ones issued with them. Have they worked? Depends on your point of view. The cynics say they haven’t because those issued with them tend to turn it on it’s head and brag to their mates and the ASBO gains a badge of honour status. And then there are those who have found that ASBO’s have sorted a local problem and are therefore huge fans. It’s hard to guage.

That aside, there have been several other schemes to stop youths loitering and causing trouble such as the sound that only young people can hear that is designed to repel troublemakers. It’s supposed to work on the principle that as we get older we lose the ability to hear higher sound frequencies, and this noise is too high a frequency for adults to hear. You can download the sound and see if you can hear it it’s supposed to sound like a mosquito. According to the report it was a large success at the Wyvern Theatre in Swindon.

The theory has again been turned on it’s head with The ringtone that those over 25 can’t hear. My hearing is fairly shoddy anyway because I had surgery on both my ears aged 3 and 10-15 years of loud rock music have taken their toll. I couldn’t hear the mosquito one, but could faintly hear the ringtone – to me it sounds a bit like one of those hearing tests I did when I was at school. See how good your ears are with the mp3 link on the page. Notice that they’ve conveniently missed out the 25-30 age range on the chart though, so they could get a convenient straight line descent with age!

While I was in Boston in September, I was watching a bit of CNN, and they reiterated the story of how the UK has more CCTV cameras than anywhere in the world and supplemented it with a story from Middlesborough. They’ve started a scheme where the camera operators can Speak to the people who they are watching. I don’t know about you, but to me it’s a bit much, and further evidence of the Nanny State that we are increasingly living in. Things like banning Fast Food adverts between children’s programmes don’t do much to change my view on this.

But enough of my side-track, onto the next one which I heard about last week.
New lights make faces and acne shine pink – couldn’t find a bbc story on this so you’ll have to have the trashy tabloid the daily mail as the source!
They did a test of it on radio the other day and they suggested it didn’t work particularly well, but we’ll have to wait and see the results

And of course, a rant about youths wouldn’t be complete without a story about teenage drinking on the rise and the obligatory Child aged nine admitted to hospital unconscious from alcohol. I made a note of this yesterday because it’s going to be shown on tv tomorrow and they’re claiming the figures came from the NHS (so i’m interested in where it came from):

Panorama’s Booze: What Teenagers Need to Know will be broadcast on BBC One on Sunday 19 November at 2215 GMT.

So, we’re using technology to tackle the problem, giving special powers to give out ASBOs, and drinking in teenagers is on the rise.
I was no model youth, and was underage drinking when I was a teenager. But I wasn’t being told I was acting antisocially, wasn’t drinking until I was hauled into an ambulance (though I came pretty close while I was at subway city at university). Is it all the teenager’s fault, or should the ASBO go to the parents to sort their child out? I dunno, but it always strikes me that those who get into this sort of mess are given an unfair start which they never make up for. Just my 2¢ worth plus a lot of links to keep you busy

Membership

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Back in February when I was using WordPress 1.5.2 all sorts of security holes started opening up to the point where I had to require membership for comments – I was getting all sorts of spam posts which drove me mad
With WordPress 2 and some plugins like akismet and spamkarma I’m pretty happy that I no longer need to require this anymore

Also, it’s been a little quiet here, particularly since MacHeadCase started her course. I know my friend Sham wants to comment without having to sign up. Plus, I think I’m losing out on a lot of readers who would otherwise comment but for the registration.

So, as of now you no longer need to register to comment on any of my posts
Of course all current members will retain their membership, and you can continue to use your username and password as normal and it’s always appreciated if you do decide to join
If however, things return to spam city I will have no hesitation in switching the members only option back on

Three Criminals, Two hanged, and the other 40 years in Jail

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Guy Fawkes
Guido Fawkes, or Guy Fawkes as he is more commonly known tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament on November 5th 1605. He was the explosives expert of the gang in the gunpowder plot. He was caught “red-handed” before he could set the explosions off & arrested. After being tortured into revealing the names of his co-conspiritors he was hung drawn and quartered along with the rest of his gang – as was the style for anyone tried as a traitor. He was trying to kill the King James I (or VI of Scotland) who was to address the joint houses of Parliament (Commons and Lords). The aims of the gang are thought to be comparable to those of modern day terrorists. They also had religious motives – James I was Protestant while the gang was Catholic.
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein – sentenced by the Iraq Special Tribunal to death by hanging on November 5th 2006 for crimes against humanity. An infamous dictator who rules Iraq with an iron fist and used chemical weapons on Kurdish separatists in the Iran-Iraq war. It may never be known what other crimes he committed due to lack of evidence and willingness of witnesses to testify.
Dhiren Barot
Dhiren Barot aka Abu Musa al-Hindi – born in India in 1971 to a hindu family. Moved to the UK in 1973 and attended Kingsbury High School in North London. but after leaving he converted to Islam in 1991. From 1995 onwards he lived the life of a terrorist, participating in campaigns in Kashmir, wrote a book about it in 1999 and served as an Al-Quaeda agent. The list of what he has plotted seems never-ending, and today on 7th November 2006 he was sentenced to life imprisonment (which must be a minimum of 40 years).

Queen’s Road ALM

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Tonight was the first match for our new 5-a-side football team named as per the title of this blog
For the past 6 months we’ve been trying to recruit a team of some sort spurred on by my mates Ravi and Sham
We started off playing at our local park on Queen’s Road after advertising on gumtree.com. Back in March when we first started having a kick around on sunday afternoon we were initially looking at 11 a side. We nearly had enough at the beginning, but over the weeks numbers dropped. I lost interest for a long while. We all kept in touch using a mailing list from coollist.com

Then, interest was kickstarted when Ravi decided a 5-a-side league team was the way forward. We joined topcorner’s Thursday night league. We play every thursday for the next 6 weeks, have a month off, then play the final 4 matches in Jan & Feb.

For the moment, I’m going to be playing in goal, though that isn’t necessarily going to continue for the whole tournament. It’s the first time i’ve played 5-a-side and the first time i’ve played in goal. So, while we lost our first match there were a lot of positives to come out.
We had a horrible start, 2-0 down within the first few minutes (partly my fault for giving away a penalty for leaving the area), but we did get back to 2-1, and then come half time it was 4-2 to our opposition. We ended the game losing 8-2 – but when you consider this was our first match with a cobbled together team that hadn’t been playing together very long (some of the players hadn’t joined us for practice in months), I think we won’t be out of our league.

I made some good saves, though also made some howlers (there has to be some given the score). I particularly liked the one I caught between my knees when I was indecisive whether to catch or stop with my feet and ended up doing neither (but still managed to keep it out!). Am definitely looking forward to the match next week. It’s fun, a good workout, and if we put in some effort we could still do reasonably well in the league.

On the downside, I think we’ve conceded the biggest loss so far and look likely to go bottom of the table following today’s match

Onto our team name though – it has a rather amusing story. At the time of filling out the form, Ravi wrote the first thing that came into his head:
Sham’s Terrorists
This apparently didn’t go down very well with the league operators, and when it came to finding out some more details they told us we’d have to change it. So, we duly did. Ravi is a Queen’s Park Rangers fan, and the park we practice at is on Queen’s Road. So we were going to be Queen’s Road Rangers. But, we decided to have a bit of a joke at the league. Jonathan, who’s in the squad works for the ALG (though it’s just been renamed the London Council) so we got that in there. Then we decided to do a bit of a twist and changed it from Association of Local Government (ALG) to ALM. It was agreed down the pub and it stuck.

The league were happy with the new name, and we get to have a bit of a laugh at their political correctness.