Author: Mosh

This is why Disclosure is pointless

HIMMELPFORT, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 16: A man dre...
Santa needs *this* many forms

Many of you will be aware by now that if you take up any position – paid or voluntary – whereby you will come into contact with children then you have to be “disclosed”. This entails filling out a form detailing where you’ve lived for the last three years, forwarding proof of identity and getting letters from the police of any country you’ve been in (for 3 months or more) saying that you weren’t naughty when you were there.

Oh, and it’s not just if you will be working with kids. It’s also if you might. Maybe. One day. Such as one person I heard of who’s teaching in a college for mature students. There’s no rule stating that under 18’s can’t attend classes (though they’ve never had anyone – ever), so he had to go through the rigmarole as well.

Did I mention it’s £35 a shot as well? And, generally, you’ll need one for each employer / voluntary organisation / council / etc? My uncle does Santa Claus for a lot of organisations, hotels and so forth in the area. As of this year he’ll need five or six disclosures to do the same work he’s been doing the last umpteen years.

Of course, all this is for the good of the kids, yes? It stops dirty paedos and child molesters and murderers from getting near our children. Which is a good thing. Only it doesn’t really work. It only stops them if they’ve been caught in the past.

We have two issues here – if you don’t have one, then you can’t work with kids. This is effectively saying “guilty until proven innocent”. Until you get hold of one of these pieces of paper, you’re a potential kiddy fiddler.

Secondly, if you do get one then you’re fine. Obviously not going to try and take advantage of your trusted position to lead children astray.

Tell that to the two girls abused by the student teacher in Glasgow recently.

The simple truth of the matter lies in the single line:

As a teaching student at Glasgow University, Binns would have been fully vetted before his school placement.

“Fully vetted”. Yup. He’d not done it before. Or hadn’t been caught. Or lied on the forms. Or hadn’t previously been in a situation where temptation became too much for him. You can’t fully vet someone. Convicted murderers have passed psychological exams with flying colours, and they’re somewhat more thorough than a check of the criminal records database.

Disclosure is pointless. One thing we constantly hammer into kids in the internet safety classes we give them is that the people who deal in child porn and the like are not stupid. They’re evil, sneaky, underhanded, disgusting, degraded… and quite often very clever indeed.

Identity theft is staggeringly easy to manage. What’s to stop a persistent, previously convicted, offender from assuming someone else’s identity and sneaking under the radar? After all, once he/she has that piece of paper we’re led to assume they’re totally trustworthy.

Once again we’re being led down a pointless path due to scaremongering by the tabloids. And all it’s resulting in is a nice bit of cash flow and some jobs for people keying this data in.

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Insurance Saga

On January 29th, I had a very minor car accident with a motorcycle, luckily we found a good lawyer specialized for this at the blase inzina injury attorneys. Due to a fresh fall of snow and ungritted roads, my little Clio decided that despite my turning the wheel to the right it would keep going in a straight line. I bashed into a high kerb onto some grass where I finally gained some traction, but in the process damaged the wheel and steering. In addition the driver’s seat airbag went off (check resources like StephenBabcock.com for the expert review of the case).

No other vehicles, no damage to anything or anyone and a simple job to quote for. Easy-peasy.

Unfortunately I was driving a car insured by Saga Insurance (my folks are in the age bracket where they can use this bunch of incompetent buffoons) so instead of being a simple claim, this turned into a marathon. At a certain point, I even wanted to sell my car as a scrap vehicle (find out more at SCRAPMYCAROTTAWA.COM if you need to get rid of unwanted car).

In brief, the car went at first to my cousin’s garage where they looked at it, diagnosed the mechanical trouble and told me it would be around £300 to fix it (no labour charge for family). However, he couldn’t repair the seats, seatbelt tensioners and airbag. For that it would have to go to the coachworks next door.

That quote came to over £2000 so it went from a quick fix to an insurance issue. An thus the fun began. Saga were contacted with the details on Monday February 1st and given the details of the problem. Remember, this is as simple as it gets. They had a quote ready for them and no third parties to worry about. It was a simple case of “is the car worth repairing or is it a write-off?”

After two weeks we started to nudge them again. Yes. TWO WEEKS. Apparently they were, and I quote “busy”. As if that’s our problem. Where I stay, the public transport sucks more than Dyson’s finest and the lack of a car was taking its toll on both my personal life and my educational one. A 30 minute drive to college equates to 2 1/2 hours using buses and trains.

After a further week or so we received a request for copies of all the drivers’ licenses. No reason why, or why it had taken three weeks for this request to come through. As far as we could figure it was another excuse for them to drag the claim out more to avoid coughing up.

At the end of the month my dad rang them and pretty much said if they didn’t get their thumbs out of their collective arses and make a decision one way or the other, he’d be taking his insurance elsewhere. My folks don’t just have their car insurance (two cars) with them, they also have the house, possessions and so forth. All of their insurance policies, basically.

By some amazing coincidence, the garage were contacted the next day and told to go ahead with repairs. Time since accident: almost 5 weeks.

Thankfully the garage were swift, and swifter still as a favour to my cousin especially when they heard about the death of my gran. Only a shame I couldn’t have had the car back much sooner so that I could have perhaps seen her a little more often just before she died.

And on to today, March 13th.

My dad got home late this afternoon to a letter from the insurance company dated March 5th. Note that this is after Saga told us to get the car fixed.

The letter states that they will contact us soon after they have made their decision as to whether the car is economically repairable or not. Erm. OK.

Further, as I seem to be the main user of the vehicle and I’m not meant to be (I’m a named driver) they have decided that they no longer wish to insure the car. Therefore as of 14 days from the date on the letter, which would be next Friday, the policy will become null and void and we have to go elsewhere.

Which is strange. If they wanted to null the policy on the basis I shouldn’t have been driving the car then surely they could have used that as an excuse to refuse a payout four weeks earlier. At which point I could have arranged to have the car repaired privately and had the damn thing on the road within a fortnight.

Essentially it looks like a case of left hand/right hand/no idea.

What worries me most is that this is a company that aims its product at the higher end of the age scale, and therefore one of the more vulnerable markets. A lot of over 60’s will freak if they get badgered by insurance people and may well give up or avoid claims as a result. Thankfully my dad’s not one of them, but I hate to think how many other policyholders would put up with this crap.

Needless to say, we’re shifting my car insurance ASAP… along with all the other policies. Saga have just lost as much business as one person can possibly give them. But look at it from my parents’ point of view – if the company can make this much of a mess from the simplest of vehicular claims, would they really want them handling a house fire or flood damage? You’d better consult Singleton Law Firm and give them a call after a fire.

Hell, no.

It’s all well and good looking for the cheapest quote. But if that quote will get you abysmal service when what you need is help then it’s not worth the saving. And I’ve not even gone into the time spent on hold, the non-returned calls, the insistence on details being faxed rather than emailed and so forth.

Saga Insurance. Avoid. They are, in every respect as far as our experience is concerned, complete and utter ****.

Click on the following to find out if Can you get a car loan with bad credit?

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If Carlsberg made primary schools…

It is Carlsberg that do that “if…” adverts, isn’t it? I’m advertising’s worst target. I can never remember what company goes with what slogan.

Anyway. If some company who thinks they’re great made primary schools then I give you their end result (based on a 3-hour visit): Woodhill Primary in Bishopbriggs. As part of my PGDE, I requested a visit to a local school and this was the one selected for me. I’m teaching Computing and the school had been informed of this so focussed my visit on the IT side of things.

Ordinarily this would have been a suite and a few whiteboards. Instead, I was treated to a school with a small bundle of PCs and a “laptop safe” on wheels which allows a class of 30 pupils to share one between two. Each room has a network point to which a wireless hub is attached so all of the machines have wifi access.

The kids were unbelievable. One teacher – a confessed technophobe – told me of the start of term. “Over the next few weeks,” she said, “we’ll be studying the Romans.”

A hand goes up. “Miss – can we do a PowerPoint about them?”

“A Power-what?”

She asked the other staff and was told to just hand the laptops over once they’d done a bit of research and let the kids loose. These children are in P5 (arounf 11 years old) and I can tell you right now that their ability to produce a half-decent presentation exceeds that of some lecturers who’ve made me suffer for an hour or more at university.

Another thing that hugely impressed me was the school’s use of their web page. Very well put together, up to date and regularly added to. I gather the teaching assistants have a large part to play in this and their work is a great advert for the school. Bright, simple to navigate, and chock full of stuff the kids have done – much of it written and produced by them.

It’s a superb way of being able to say “look what I did today, mum” while allowing parents to feed back and comment on work that would otherwise be difficult for them to appreciate.

I am still mulling over doing a PGDE(P) when I finish this Secondary course, and my experience at Woodhill certainly hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm. If anything, it’s buoyed me further.

A quick “thank you” to the staff and kids for making my brief visit interesting, educational, worthwhile and fun!

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RIP Granny Annie 1922 – 2010

After a very brief and sudden illness, one of my grans passed on this morning.

It’s been a while since I posted anything actually personal on this blog, but I feel this justifies a few words. I only wish I had a decent photo to go with it. Unfortunately all the pics I have of her are actual old-fashioned ones on paper, stored in a drawer a few miles away and I don’t have access to a scanner anyway.

Instead I’ll have to paint you a picture with words. She was 88, which is a great innings by any standard. The thing is, I don’t really remember her looking any different in all the years I knew her. She was just my gran. The little old lady with the white hair who fussed over me and kept buying me sweets. My kind of woman.

If I had to pick one character trait of my gran that stood out more than any other, it was that she always went out of her way to make other people’s lives easier. She was always there to help and hated being a burden on anyone else. Right up to the end she was fussing over us when we visited her in hospital as we were going to far too much trouble on her account.

One thing I remember her telling me only a couple of years ago is how her cooking wasn’t up to that of my other gran. She could “only” manage to rustle up a ham roll on the afternoon I visited.

Let me tell you something – and I bet all of you who know/knew your grannies will agree – a ham sandwich put together by a little old lady who means the world to you is more tasty and nourishing than any 5-course meal slaved over by some self-important TV chef.

I have loads of memories of my gran and I’m really happy to say that I managed to see her quite a bit over the last few months once I returned to the UK. Something I’d not have managed had I stayed down in England or continued travelling abroad.

Right up until the end I don’t think she appreciated how special she was to all of us. The thought simply wouldn’t have occurred to her. She was just… herself.

And that’s why I loved her and why I’ll miss her.

Get out the placards!

OK, folks. Time for a protest. Well, time to think of witty slogans and to start picking up cheap flimsy cardboard and wood to make signs with. Empire is reporting that Paramount Pictures are considering making a 3D version of the Book of Genesis (story here).

So why the protests? Well, if Catholics and other Christian denominations can feel justified in protesting outside of the likes of Jerry Springer: The Musical, Dogma and Life of Brian then surely those of other religious backgrounds (or no religious background) should be free to protest a film based on a book that contradicts their beliefs? Or, indeed, lack of them.

Having said that, I don’t know if I can picture crowds of atheists surrounding the Odeon, getting a bit hot under the collar about a film that insinuates that the Earth didn’t come into being 10 billion years ago. I think this may be because, unlike mad religious people, they’re generally happier to let other people live their own lives and make their own choices rather than force theirs on everyone else.

[Note – I’m not painting all religious people with one brush, here. But, come on, there are some nutjobs out there]

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