We’ve just watched Bowling for Columbine. It’s probably quite controversial over in the US, but to me it was mostly thought provoking. Clearly Michael Moore had an agenda related to the NRA, the media and the Work-for-Welfare scheme (or whatever it’s called!)

I kind of expected it to be really anti-gun, but then there was a section on how in Canada, over 33% of the population own guns, yet there is hardly any gun-related murders. Certainly, made me think that Canada would be a nice place to emigrate to! They don’t need to lock their doors! Clearly the amount of guns in the US is not the issue that Moore’s blaming, more the “system”.

It appears that there inaccuracies all over the place as noted here. There are other sites too. This is Michael Moore’s response to the criticisms levelled at him. Both articles are worth reading.

Best points for me were Marylin Manson came over really really well as remarkably bright and able to think for himself. Might have to investigate his music! Also, the reaction of K-Mart to a “stunt” with two Columbine survivors was to remove the sale of bullets within 90 days. This was a great reaction and far more positive than he was expecting and it’s nice to see a corporate do “the right thing”.

Whatever “the truth”, it made me think a bit about gun crime in general and personally I still prefer that Britain doesn’t have guns in every house.

I’d like to be able to leave my door unlocked though…

Trying to come up with imaginative pictures to this thing is hard!

Another one…

Cheating by doing an easy one today…

This wasn’t actually in my plan of out of reach, but when I saw Jon trying to build the last bit of the tower, I had to capture it. Jon wasn’t too impressed that I was busy taking the photo rather than helping him though!

I thought I’d have a go at doing 26 Things. I’ve set up a category in the photo album, but it’s not really geared to this problem. Maybe I’ll actually get my act together and write a new CMS system for this site…

Anyway… first picture is “Through”. It’s taken in the grounds of my workplace. I just like the chair being out in the warm sunshine and the route to it being in the cold shade.

Scary this social engineering, isn’t it?

I’ve bee reading Three Shoes, One Sock & No Hairbrush over the last few weeks (intermittently!)

This bit makes me think about the nature of our society:

“By the time I got pregnant with my second child, I knew my days of full-time work were gone, if not for good, then at least for the next five years. I had down-shifted my expectations to accomodate the previously unimaginable reality of being a mother, of loving my children, of being needed by my children. I am resigned to working less than I’d like, earning less than I’d like, achieving less than I’d like and doing more housework than I’d like.”

The bit in the bold (my emphasis) is the “problem bit”. (I can understand the concept of someone doing too much housework than they’d like to do! :) However spending more time with your children should not mean you are achieving less in your own eyes or in the eyes of society. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case. Nurturing a child (or more usually, more than one child) through the first 5 years is an achievement it it’s own right. I find it quite sad that only wormen with jobs are recognised as “achievers”, even by authors of books about bringing up children.

Fascinating conversation on Radio 5Live today between a Labour and a Conservative about their respective education policies. The Conservative spent most of his time saying “this is what’s currently wrong and this is what we are going to do to fix them”. The Labour man told us what was wrong with the Conservative’s ideas.

I still have no idea what Labour’s plans for education are, other than they involve “choice”.

Whatever that may mean.

One thing the Liberals have got right is their observation that most of us don’t want choice; we’d rather have our closest school/hospital/doctors to be very good. This I agree with; I just don’t see how it can be acheived without some ability for parents/patients to vote with their feet.

Do proper research into complexity of project before taking it on…