Can You Spare a Room?

So, as of next month, the current administration is introducing a bedroom tax to council properties, which means that those considered to have a spare bedroom will have to pay an extra tax for the priviledge of. If haven't already read the guidelines, they're just HERE for you.

Now, the theory of this tax, I do completely agree with. I would use personal examples, but I'm not sure how certain people in my family would feel about that, so let's go with a hypothetical. If you have a couple living in a three bedroom or four bedroom home which is provided by the council, with council waiting lists so long, is it really acceptable for them to be wasting space that could house a whole family.

What I don't agree with is the government essentially prescribing to people where their children ought to sleep. I freely admit that I'm pretty priviledged, but at no point in my life - living at home anyway - have my brother and I had to share a bedroom. Under the rules of this tax, until the age of 10, my brother and I would have had to share a bedroom. If that had happened, only one of us would have reached age 10... The same rules state that until the age of 16, children of the same gender would have to share. I can't imagine anything worse than that really.

I remember what I was like in my early teenage years. I was a pain in the arse and I spent a long time in my room, on my own. At that age, being able to have time on your own, being able to have somewhere to go to that is private and that is your own can be very important, and yet we're essentially saying that's only okay if you're parents have the money to pay for it.

Before I start sounding a bit too left wing - come on, I don't want to mislead anyone around here - I would like to say that I do believe that if it's because parents are just on job seekers and always have been, then that's a little bit more understandable, but the issue I have is HERE. Cases like that of the Egglestone's.

It's just something to think about...

Dear BBC,

This is just going to be a quick blog because I found this really funny. 

So, BBC news is the homepage on my college computers. The first thing I saw when I connected to the internet today was the headline "Does the Modern Childhood End at 12?" followed by an article offering PARENTING ADVICE FROM THE BBC. BBC, are you serious? 

It feels like only weeks ago that the Jimmy Saville scandal broke into the public eye - and if you believe the Daily Mail then there is still news to be printed about this scandal (article linked to was published three day ago) - and now the BBC wants to give out parenting advice. I don't think so. 

Even still, I'd love a definition of what is the modern childhood. The age at which childhood ends has always been somewhat ambiguous and I think it fluctuates over time, dependent upon geography and actually varies person to person. 

During the times of the industrial revolution, childhood ended when the child was around five and could be put to work cleaning machines - because of their conveniently tiny little fingers - or up chimneys, because they were small enough to climb up them. 

After the passing of the Elementary Education Act 1880, the age at which childhood ends could be classed at age 10, when a child leaves compulsory education.  

Obviously from then there has been a progression into the modern era, where we seem to deem childhood as over by either 16 or 18, or even at 21 in America, depending on how you would determine the end of childhood, but considering we allow things such as the sexualisation of children through fashion trends and beauty pageants, as well as making children essentially adults in training by bringing in all the technological advancements we have in the working world - netbooks, iPads, iPhones etc - into the classroom, we can argue as to whether a pure form of childhood really exists. I really miss the days when I'd do stupid things like go on a bike ride for the whole day or go outside skipping or just general make-believe games that I remember as framing my childhood. Now, when I go home, most of the kids are on motorised scooters, sat on the corners of our street playing on the Nintendo DS or whatever the latest handheld games console is. 

The real issue that I'm having a moan about isn't whether or not the above paragraph is a destruction of what childhood should be in my view, it's that we're even complaining about things like this at all when some cultures actually believe that when a girl gets her first period which can be anywhere between the ages of 10 and 15, although the average is 12, that a girl has become a woman and it's time to have her married and having her own family. 

The adverts are all over the underground, and let's face it, there is barely more of an end to childhood than having your own child. This has ended up being a bit of a rant-gent (ranting tangent) from the original BBC parenting advice LOL but the point I'm making is Okay BBC, maybe we're pressuring kids to grow up too quickly and maybe a return to the days of playing hula hoop in the yard and then coming in for a bag of Hula Hoops when you've got home from school would be nice, but at least our 12 year olds aren't starting to raise their own families.

Childhood: When is it meant to end?

Nothing News,

Until I moved house, I was pretty oblivious with the news, because I don't have BBC News as my homepage any more, I didn't own a radio and I pick up the Metro or the Standard, but then I just don't really read it, since nothing really draws me into it. When I moved to Roehampton though, I became more into listening out for what's going on, because we have a radio in our kitchen which we have playing BBC Radio One pretty much all the time. I've just turned it off though, because I don't need "projections" of what the closures of HMV stores and Blockbuster going into administration is going to do to the film industry. 

What's basically being said is that film industries rely on the idea that they are going to make X amount of money from DVD sales, and the lack of stores on the high street offering these may reduce the amount of DVDs sold. If I'm honest, I think that is a dreadful pile of poo, because if you WANT the DVD and the DVD is still available through other channels e.g. Amazon then you're more than likely to still buy the bloody thing, right? I'm not saying it's an ideal situation, but it's not quite the dire straits that they're implying. Also, one of the reasons that rentals with Blockbuster are declining is because of the existence of other companies e.g. Netflix and Lovefilm who offer roughly the same service, but you don't have to try and run to the shops after work. Either they are delivered straight to your door and can be posted back, or they are just there on the internet in a beautiful, easy to search online library. The issue for Blockbuster is that they were overtaken. They could have, if they had realised how lucrative this business idea was, still been the big name with it, but Netflix and Lovefilm have developed their own reputations now, and would almost certainly be seen as the better alternative as they've had years to build, while Blockbusters have been declining.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not Amazon's biggest fan - the fact that they make the KDP website so difficult to FIND let alone actually NAVIGATE is something which is particularly annoying about them - but the fact is that when it comes to expanding the business to be more convenient for it's customers, hell, they do that better than anyone. I don't know if any of you have seen these new Amazon lockers - I know there's on in West 12 and Hammersmith Bus Station in London - but they're fantastic. If you live somewhere that isn't great for post *cough cough* Elephant and Castle *cough* or the package that you want would be too big to go through the letter box, you can just get them delivered there and pick them up in a couple of days. Simples. 

One of the things which did worry me though was that if there is seen to be a decline in DVD sales, then film makers will have to look for other sources of income to foot the costs (investors won't put money into it if they won't see a return after all) so whether we like it or not, I guess that means there's going to be more product placement in films from now on. Great. As if it wasn't weird enough to see James Bond drinking Hieniken. What the heck is going to be next? It just reminds me of a line from a truly underrated film called Catch and Release with Jennifer Garner in it where the guy describes movies as Sell, sell, sell, but let's kid ourselves and call it art, but advertising is Sell, sell, sell, and we all know that we're going to hell, so here's a big fat check to smooth out the ride. 

Anyway, with that and the horse meat scandal (which let's face it, most people are only throwing a tantrum about because they didn't know, and if you buy things like Findus anyway the only surprise should be that there's actually meat in it at all) I don't know why I'm paying attention. I don't know if it's that bad news sells better or that there's nothing happy going on in the world right now, but it almost makes me want to bake an absolute --- tonne of cake, take it down to the BBC and London Standard offices and tell them to cheer the hell up. 

Tell me something nice for once. Stop giving people reasons to think everything is crap.