Chuckie with the bound feet

/
Will Self: Prince Charles can’t have his say and his seven boiled eggs too
If, as Chuckie has said through his mouthpiece Jonathan Dimbleby, he wishes - like Irish presidents Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson - to have a public say on matters affecting the nation, then he should abdicate forthwith and like the two Marys stand for direct election by the people who so clearly long to hear his views.

I bet he won't, though - because then he couldn't have it all. I dunno, you would've thought a weekly audience with the prime minister of the day, plus meetings of the Privy Council, would be enough political influence for any not-terribly-bright sexagenarian toff, but it seems that Freud had it right, and not being loved enough as a child will turbo-charge a man unto the grave.

Personally, I hope the Prince does have it all and shoots his mouth off like a machine gun - it'll be his own unbound feet he'll be hitting, and as he keels over, so will the monarchy.

Structures and process! Solving the world's problems through more paperwork.

/
Plans to boost child protection
Every area of England is to be covered by a Children's Trust Board (CTB), the government is to announce.

The boards, which aim to prevent abuse by co-ordinating child protection workers, will also be strengthened.

The initiative follows the failure of social workers in Haringey to prevent the abuse and death of Baby P.
News?

This measure came out of Laming and the legislative framework for CTBs was laid out in the 2004 Children Act. Some Trusts are already up and running. But this announcement comes around the same time as research which indicates that they have little effect on childrens' services including child protection. The children's trusts created by the government after the death of Victoria Climbie have made little difference to children's services, a report says.
...Audit Commission says they often lack clear direction and have made slow progress.  ...The Audit Commission study is the first independent assessment of the trusts since they were formally created by the Children Act 2004.

The report found progress was "less than was anticipated" for the impact of children's trusts on children's services, including child protection. It said there was "little evidence of better outcomes for children and young people" and too much time was being spent on "structures and process" at the expense of improving the lives of children.  But it reported that "on the ground, professionals are working together, often through informal arrangements outside the trust framework".

"You're all going to die! Death awaits you all!"**

/
Malthusian snobs pray for cure to overpopulation
So, it's official: at the Beeb it is unacceptable to make crude jokes about having sex with someone's granddaughter, but it is perfectly OK to wish death upon large swathes of mankind.

Make a rude call to Andrew Sachs' answerphone and you will be accused of dragging the BBC's good name through the dirt. Spout misanthropic nonsense about the need for a speedily contagious disease to come and wipe out mankind and nobody will bat an eyelid.
**The immortal words of the Rev. Otto Witt in 'Zulu'.


A major advance...30 years ago

/
Learning the lessons, again
The allocation of single named social workers to at-risk children and the integration of children's services are indeed major potential advances.
Really? Children on the 'at risk' register have been allocated single, named social workers for at least the last 3 decades and this requirement has been clearly outlined in all the 'Working Together' guidelines, the first of which predates the Laming Report by many years.

It might help us all if leader writers at least did some basic research or knew something about the subject on which they pontificate.


Post-Menopausal women less bitchy

/
Women rate attractiveness differently after menopause
Scientists have discovered yet another change that happens with the menopause - the way women judge attractiveness. Benedict Jones and his team at the University of Aberdeen found that post- menopausal women rate young women's faces as more feminine, and therefore more attractive, than pre-menopausal women. The research, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, points to changes in hormone levels as the cause of these differences.

Post Prop 8

/
While Obama was winning the US presidential election something else was going on in California. A state ballot on "Proposition 8" intended to exclude the possibility of gay marriage.

Almost 12 million votes were cast and Prop 8 was passed by a majority of almost 0.5 million. This has unleashed a debate in the US at least as vigorous as the one surrounding Obama's election.

Here is an excellent selection of blogposts and articles covering the subject, with an emphasis on the position of alleged racism in all of this:

 Powens Preposterous Posterous


Doctor in the house

/
From The New England Journal of Medicine comes an interesting discussion about what the US can learn from the UK approach to primary medical care.

Lessons from the U.K.
It is hard to discuss U.K. medical care without mentioning universal coverage. Although it may not be politically achievable in the United States, universal access to care is probably the key factor behind findings that U.K. citizens have better health outcomes than their U.S. counterparts despite having health care costs that are a fraction of those in the United States