Thursday 10 November 2011
NO MOBILES FOR CHILDREN
The Times of India have posted an article on 'Health Time Bombs ' of mobile phones. I have to say that I have been warning people about this for years. Professor Denis Henshaw, of Bristol University, advocates cigarette-style warnings on mobile phone packets. "Vast numbers of people are using mobile phones and they could be a time bomb of health problems - not just brain tumours, but also fertility, which would be a serious public health issue," the Daily Mail quoted him as saying. According to a group of leading scientists, there are more than 200 academic studies that link use of the devices with serious health conditions such as brain tumours, the Daily Mail reported. A 2008 Swedish study suggested children who use mobile phones are five times more likely to develop a rare brain tumour called a glioma. Their report submitted by a leading group of British scientists states that 'Both the Government and phone companies could very easily do far more to alert the public, particularly children, to the emerging risks and safety measures'. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Cell-phones-could-be-health-time-bombs/articleshow/10668342.cms
Friday 4 November 2011
Suffer the Little Children
This was a lead article in 'The Times' today.
"The low esteem in which we hold our young shames both them and us"
Are our children as feral as they are so often painted? As Britain was convulsed by riots this summer, the historian David Starkey declared that "feral children", coming from lone or no parent families, accounted for around a quarter of Britain's youth.'
Stepping down last year as the nation's first children's commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley Green figured Britain as "one of the most child unfriendly countries in the world". The attitude to the young people had, he said, made his job as children's champion very difficult. These are views that threaten to make W.C.Fields sound almost paternal when he remarked that "there is no such thing as a tough child - if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender".
Now, in the interview with the The Times, Anne Marie Carrie, the chief executive of Barnado's, reports that a poll by the children's charity has found that half the countries children are beginning to behave like animals. (see page 27). Almost as many think children are becoming feral.
Given that these findings are more a reflection of this nation's prejudices than a snapshot of the reality of life in Britain today, they are a shaming barometer of how dismally low our children have sunk in our own eyes.
Especially dismaying, says Ms Carrie, is that one in four of us thinks that children who behave antisocially are beyond help by the age of 10. "What hope is there for children in the UK if nearly half of adults think all children - your children, my children, your neighbours' children - are animals. Adults in Britain are walking away from our children and giving up on them"
Britain's sometimes chilly attitude to its young rings true, anecdotally at least, with those families that take holidays in Mediterranean countries where children are not only accommodated in restaurants but welcomed and even cooed over.
In Britain, what should be an instinctive warmth to the most vulnerable in society, is often replaced by a mix of fear, and contempt. Where adults should see a young child, stumbling to make sense of a challenging world., they see instead a thug, or a youth on the way to becoming one.
One trouble is that, as far as our children in Britain are concerned, we too often imagine the worst, and too rarely recognise the best. In the prickle of panic generated by the summer's riots, too many people rushed to identify hooliganism everywhere when there was often only pockets of opportunistic looting.
The blame fell on everything from liberal values and violence-glorifying rap music, to slovenly parenting. Dr Starkey was convinced that a "particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion" - are removed, evidently from the peaceable age of Tudor England in which he specializes.
Historians, of all people, should know that Britain has not tumbled into hell. In 1898, The Times quoted a magistrate who remarked that "it is melancholy to find that some parents are not ashamed to confess that children of seven or eight years old are entirely beyond their control".
In his new book, the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker catalogues how often pessimism trumps the facts. He finds that the world is rarely as scary as it is regularly portrayed. Almost everywhere, life is getting better, safer, more civilized. Our fears are often groundless. Stigmatising the young, branding them all feral for the mischief of a relative few, does both society and, especially, children an injustice.
-ends-
3rd of November, 2011.
"The low esteem in which we hold our young shames both them and us"
Are our children as feral as they are so often painted? As Britain was convulsed by riots this summer, the historian David Starkey declared that "feral children", coming from lone or no parent families, accounted for around a quarter of Britain's youth.'
Stepping down last year as the nation's first children's commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley Green figured Britain as "one of the most child unfriendly countries in the world". The attitude to the young people had, he said, made his job as children's champion very difficult. These are views that threaten to make W.C.Fields sound almost paternal when he remarked that "there is no such thing as a tough child - if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender".
Now, in the interview with the The Times, Anne Marie Carrie, the chief executive of Barnado's, reports that a poll by the children's charity has found that half the countries children are beginning to behave like animals. (see page 27). Almost as many think children are becoming feral.
Given that these findings are more a reflection of this nation's prejudices than a snapshot of the reality of life in Britain today, they are a shaming barometer of how dismally low our children have sunk in our own eyes.
Especially dismaying, says Ms Carrie, is that one in four of us thinks that children who behave antisocially are beyond help by the age of 10. "What hope is there for children in the UK if nearly half of adults think all children - your children, my children, your neighbours' children - are animals. Adults in Britain are walking away from our children and giving up on them"
Britain's sometimes chilly attitude to its young rings true, anecdotally at least, with those families that take holidays in Mediterranean countries where children are not only accommodated in restaurants but welcomed and even cooed over.
In Britain, what should be an instinctive warmth to the most vulnerable in society, is often replaced by a mix of fear, and contempt. Where adults should see a young child, stumbling to make sense of a challenging world., they see instead a thug, or a youth on the way to becoming one.
One trouble is that, as far as our children in Britain are concerned, we too often imagine the worst, and too rarely recognise the best. In the prickle of panic generated by the summer's riots, too many people rushed to identify hooliganism everywhere when there was often only pockets of opportunistic looting.
The blame fell on everything from liberal values and violence-glorifying rap music, to slovenly parenting. Dr Starkey was convinced that a "particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion" - are removed, evidently from the peaceable age of Tudor England in which he specializes.
Historians, of all people, should know that Britain has not tumbled into hell. In 1898, The Times quoted a magistrate who remarked that "it is melancholy to find that some parents are not ashamed to confess that children of seven or eight years old are entirely beyond their control".
In his new book, the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker catalogues how often pessimism trumps the facts. He finds that the world is rarely as scary as it is regularly portrayed. Almost everywhere, life is getting better, safer, more civilized. Our fears are often groundless. Stigmatising the young, branding them all feral for the mischief of a relative few, does both society and, especially, children an injustice.
-ends-
3rd of November, 2011.
You will notice that it was a woman that wrote this article, providing mainly quotes from male academics that influence governments on policy making.Messenger of the Covenant - Children's Advocate
Do we ever see words like love, compassion and mercy in mainstream media? Do we even see the solutions? No, when they were offered proven solutions and a research report, not a single journalist picked up on it. Do these male academics even know what the word mercy and love means?
It seems to me that the world waits for disaster or a crisis to happen before they are willing to speak up and do something about it.
And its no good talking about it at conferences with like minded people. People have to get out there and call the adult offenders out for who and what they are.
Recommend that they have the couraqe and humility to connect with their ‘inner child’ then maybe, just maybe, they will connect with their hearts again, so that they can understand children and connect with them.
As Christ said ‘You have to be like children to enter the kingdom of heaven’.
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