Is Sainsbury Brand Match a con?

a swizz?

We don't have a particular loyalty when it comes to supermarket shopping. The staff in our local Waitrose have been hugely rude to wifey on a number of occasions, when we order online from Sainsbury, all the meat has an expiry date of the next day, our nearest Tesco is miles away and I can never find anything in Morrisons. People in Asda never seem to cover their mouths when they cough either (not the supermarkets fault I know but still...)

Sometimes we do venture in-store to Sainsbury when we're close to one and this happened the other day when we we'd just bought some DIY products from a nearby Homebase. It was the week their brand match scheme had started, something I was already deeply suspicious about, and my tweets from the time reflected this; it seemed to me like one of these schemes to ensure Sainsbury wasn't cheaper than anyone else, more like an unofficial price fixing scheme than anything. I also had my suspicions on whether they could actually manage the whole thing in a way that was beneficial to me as a consumer. When we're out shopping, like a lot of people, we tend to stock up on things that are on special offer, be it tinned tomatoes, breakfast cereals or whatever. We do that by looking on shelves; unfortunately I haven't developed a remote viewing capability to allow me to check what's on distant shelves in other supermarkets.

We bought our trolley full of things and paid for it at the checkout. As per, we had a lot of frozen stuff, so we were keen to get home before it defrosted and before the kids kicked off more massively than they already had done. Taking the two of them round a supermarket is soul destroying at the best of times. As we walked back to the car, wifey did a brief audit on the till receipt.

We'd saved six pounds something on brand match the receipt cheerfully told us. Great, the problem however wasn't a new one sadly, it's fairly common in most supermarkets. A lot of the actual in-store special offers we'd picked up hadn't scanned. Enough to actually eclipse the savings on brand match. I don't think we'd have bought the dips if they hadn't been on three for £2, they didn't go through though. The cheese was apparently on special offer too, not that the tills seemed to recognise this, as well as a myriad of other non branded items.

The Dairylea I'm confused on. This was in a two for one offer so we picked up two. The two for one didn't scan though. Could this be a brand match issue? Did the Dairlylea not go through because as part of my "basket" of branded goods, the basket overall was a few pence cheaper as Tesco or Asda? That's how brand match works you see, rather than price matching individual items, the clever computer matches the price of all your branded goods against the same branded goods in other supermarkets. Whichever has the overall biggest saving (presuming there is one) gets given to you as a coupon. Or did it simply fail to go through as the deal was showing on the shelves but not registered on the till set up. Either way, we wouldn't have bought the Dairylea if it hadn't been on special offer. I've tweeted SainsburyPR and asked for clarification. As yet no reply.

Beforehand, my big issue with brand match wasn't so much the idea behind it, although as I've said above, I had my suspicions, my big problem was whether Sainsbury could technically manage it. Unfortunately the in-store deals not going through at the till is a very common problem, and not one isolated just to Sainsbury. I imagine a lot of people like us are in a hurry with kids and don't spot it when the offer doesn't ring up at the till. Supermarkets also put very similar products not included in the offers right next to them, so people can pick them up "by mistake". Before we had kids in tow, it was easy to query, even if the frozen food was often half defrosted by that point, but with kids we haven't got a chance unless one of us is glaring at the till whilst everything is scanned and the other is bag packing/kid wrangling.

And if Sainsbury can't even get their own in-store offers right, how can we be sure any of the other supermarkets offers are input correctly?

My Shell V-Power Maranello trip

This is a properly produced video I somehow missed of our trip to Ferrari at Maranello back in June. Looks even more impressive on video :)

I've been a very lucky chap with the Shell V-Power Network of Champions this year.

Lads clothes at Ellos

It's widely known I'm a big lad. I'm 6ft 4 and not exactly skinny. The only time we've been abroad and I've had a shufty in clothes shops was our trip to Denmark. They lads out there are big fellas.

When it comes to kids clothing though, we tend to buy a lot of Scandanavian brands as they seem incredibly durable and still fashionable. So I was interested to see that a Swedish clothing company called Ellos has launched a UK website. 

If the adult stuff is as sturdy and fashionable as the Scandinavian kids stuff tends to be they're on to a winner in my book. The sizes look to be pretty good too, it's always a bonus to be able to get a 33/34 inch inside leg with a 40 inch waist. looking at their cargo pants, the prices are competitive too. I tend to buy a lot of my clothing from GAP, and comparing the prices, Ellos are more than competitive. And you can guarantee less people will be wearing Ellos too, not that as a bloke that's much of a consideration. 

I must say I am particularly enamoured by the cargo pants as I appear to have worn the crotch through on my current pair of January sale specials (ten months of almost constant wear, that's not too bad is it?) Ellos do the usual free returns if you've optimistically misjudged the sizing or the style doesn't look quite as good on you as it does on a model. Which is nice. All in all, I think the Ellos mens clothing is well worth having a look at.


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Joe Brown Hoodies

If you're a fan of The HBO series Game of Thrones or the books it's based on, the phrase "Winter's coming" has a special resonance. Even if you're not, you've probably noticed the nights are drawing in and if you go out early in the morning, your breath is leaving a vapour trail in the air. It's getting chilly.

Autumn is a funny time though, although it's cold it's not really time to dig out the heavy winter coats and it's usually best to go for a layered effect. On my walk to work I often start off shivering but by the time I reach the office I'm carrying my coat and in my shirt sleeves. 

It's a four mile round trip to and from work and want I tend to do this time of the year is stuff a jumper or hoodie on under my coat, then cram the lightweight coat into my manbag when I get about half way in and build up a head of steam. 

The Joe Brown hoodies are an ideal fit under a summer coat too, although I won't be scaring the joggers just yet with the hood up. This Sherpa lined hoodie will probably see me through until the chilliest part of winter. At that point I shall put on my madly unfashionable ski hat and frighten the joggers off with that!





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Daddacool Show Ep4- Meningitis Special

 Meningitis Trust,
Meningitis Research Foundation,
Meningitis UK

Symptoms
Android/iPhone App

Domestic Goddess in Training

baked by Fifi

Fifi is only two and three quarters now but there are some things she loves doing that her older brother wouldn't be seen dead doing. Cooking ,and baking specifically, is one of those things. It's not a gender thing though, simply the fact that i) the boy doesn't like getting his fingers sticky and ii) he'd much rather be watching the telly or playing with his toys.

Obviously wifey does the measuring out of the ingredients and some of the finer points of the icing but the rest is very much Fifi's own work, and by and large the results are yummy too. I think it's good for her to have an interest that isn't the same as the boys, not least because he's 21 months older and tends to be better at her because of this. It's great to see the pride she has in doing something well that she doesn't have to compare to her big brother.

It's not something I'd feel comfortable with either as I'm rather rubbish at mucky activities, it must be where the boy gets it from! Seeing Fifi and her Mummy baking in the kitchen, chatting away while they make stuff is one of the cutest things ever though. I hope she doesn't lose her interest in it either, I wasn't encouraged to help at home in that sort of way and it wasn't until home economics at school that I actually did any cooking.

Lets face it though, when your little girl has this much fun doing something, how can you not love scoffing the resultant baking?

mixing brownies

PINK! icing

showing the boy how it's done

The nomadic lads room

The "lad's room" has moved once more. Ever since Mrs Cool and I moved in together almost ten years ago, there's been what we've referred to as the lads room. Initially it had computers and other multi use stuff in it, but once we both got laptops/netbooks, the need for a proper desktop computer sort of disappeared and the lad's room became a proper den.

A rummage around in my parents loft helped matters and it wasn't long until I had a few retro videogame machines set up. A Sega Saturn, a Sega Dreamcast, a Megadrive were joined by a Turbo Grafix 16 and SNES. The games were all arranged on a shelf, alphabetically by device. I even managed to put up some Daredevil and Spider-man posters. I never did have the nerve to put up my Pink Floyd posters for some reason though.

When we moved to our current house and started a family, I got to keep the lad's room. Eventually when Fifi came along, I got kicked out of the third bedroom into the box room. When we accumulated an inordinate amount of (kids) stuff, the room became another dumping ground, and the gaming stuff was pretty inaccessible. And now that baby number three is rapidly approaching the world, even an inaccessible lad's room is a wistful thought.

Fortunately I've been relocated. That's right, Harry Potter-esque, I'm now living in the cupboard under the stairs. So far I've only got the Saturn set up but the trouble kicked in when I booted up Steep Slope Sliders. The four year old spotted what I was up to and wrestled my arcade stick off me. 40 minutes later, after I'd broken up half a dozen SHARE arguments between the boy and Fifi (who at two and a half is more than capable of holding her own), they finally lost interest and left me to it. Or so I thought. I nipped upstairs to get a crate of games and when I came back, I found interlopers had moved in. A box of Lego Princess Duplo was nestled next to some Imaginext, indicating that the child equivalent of a badger marking his patch had occurred.

I can see this fight is going to be ongoing. Next stop, the summer house...  

Learning a few things about meningitis

I was fortunate enough to be invited to a blogger forum on engagement about meningitis recently. The day happened yesterday, up in the chilly climes of Birmingham.

The event was sponsored by Novartis, the vaccine company but the talks were given by an independent doctor in Dr Rob Hicks and the three main meningitis charities in the UK, Meningitis Trust, Meningitis Research Foundation and Meningitis UK were present to talk to.

We found out about the three types of meningitis:

• fungal (less than 1% of cases) 
• viral
• bacterial (the most common)

It's the bacterial meningitis, that comes in 3 flavours that's the scary one, the one that can kill within hours if action isn't taken. In fact meningitis kills more UK children under the age of five than any other infectious disease. It can sound scary but there are many positives that you can take from the research done by charities and the pharmaceutical companies into vaccinations. More about those another day (I'll link it in here when it's written).

I've always thought of meningitis as one of those taboo subjects you should never really talk or think about in case it cottons on and decides to strike down one of your family. Stupid and superstitious but it's almost like not knowing about it is some sort of protection.

Of course everyone knows about the tumbler test and one of the other parent's there even made a point of buying some plain tumblers just so she could have some in the house if the need arose. But the tumbler test isn't actually a test for meningitis, it's a test for septicaemia (blood poisoning)  which you often get with meningitis but don't always, and is usually a late symptom anyway.

Symptoms explained, click for larger image

We had our own meningitis scare when the boy was a little baby. He had a rash, and we weren't sure if it was blanching under pressure from a tumbler. I mean, it was fading, but was it fading properly? We weren't sure so we called NHS Direct, and less than 6 minutes later a paramedic ambulance pulled up outside our house, the crew almost battering the door down in their haste to get to the boy. It turned out to be what our pharmacist usually refers to as a "non specific general viral rash".

I know most people have the fear of wasting somebody's time with a false emergency, but given that if it goes untreated, bacterial meningitis is fatal in 90% of cases; when the paramedic said the boy didn't have meningitis, I don't think I've ever been as grateful of anything in my life. And that includes the time my twisted testicle became untwisted.

The next episode of the Daddacool Show will be a meningitis special, so stay tuned for that. It has a useful and informative piece to camera from the Chief Exec of the Meningitis Trust about the charities aims. So far each "show" has had around 150 views, I'd love it if the meningitis special was watched by ten times that number, just to get the message out (and to massage my already enormous ego if I'm going to be brutally honest with myself).

You may notice in the next few days a sidebar link to Meningitis mobile app (for iPhone and Android devices) appearing. This is handy to have on your phone and might just be a life saver if you're in a situation where you just don't know what to do.

Stratagems and ploys

Having one of each in the child department at the moment, it's interesting to see the difference between boys and girls. One of the two things they obviously have in common is an overriding desire to have their own way. All of the time. But the differ in their approaches to it. Oh, to be sure, they share somethings in common, the rolling on the floor and shrieking is probably the most popular but then they are two and four so a modicum of tantruming is to be expected I suppose.

Fifi takes a very pragmatic approach. She will ask, when told no, her bottom lip will come out and she'll proclaim "Want to!" loudly and then proceed (repeatedly) to attempt to do whatever it is she's not allowed to. This will continue until you either get worn down and let her do it or lose your temper. Point to note: if you lose your temper you can guarantee that Fifi will have lost her temper by then. She has also been know to do that drama queen thing of throwing toys and things around too. My, she has a temper on her. When she gets really cross I like to pick her up and hold her at arms length, arms and legs windmilling in inarticulate rage. Makes me chuckle.

Fifi is also equipped with feminine wiles though. And she is experimenting with using them. The other day the phone at my desk rang. I picked it up to have a very upset Fifi talk to me for over 4 minutes, demanding that I come home and give her a cuddle because she missed me. What she actually missed was the biscuit that she'd been refused.

The boy is more typically a boy. If asking doesn't work, shouting is the next step. If shouting until he's purple in the face and sweaty doesn't work, physical violence or attempts to storm the room containing the object of his desire are the next step. Occasionally, just occasionally he uses cunning. I'm still impressed when he walked in with a fully made cream cheese sandwich. He'd taken a chair into the kitchen, raided the bread bin and the fridge and got busy on the bread board.

Wifey is better at stopping the escalation to violence. She uses distraction techniques much better than me to diffuse situations. I almost always work it towards a show down which inevitable causes problems in the short term.

Wayhaay! It's my kids TV nostalgia quiz!

Kids TV isn't as much fun as it used to be and by taking part in the multiple guess quiz below you'll soon find out how much better it was!

It's just for fun, there are no prizes, but I'll let you know who gets the top answer next week and I'll also publish the answers too. Will anyone get them all right?!

---

Ulysses might be soaring through the galaxy but what year was he doing it in?

• 2031
• 1986
• 4099

Dogtanian faced several villians but who is this one?

• Madame
• Milady
• la furet de dame

Name this popular kids TV show

• Fingerbobs
• Jamie and the Magic Torch
• Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors

Complete the title: ....... and the wheeled warriors

• Dave
• James
• Jayce

Who was the archer in the kids cartoon Dungeons & Dragons?

• Eric
• Hank
• Bobby

M.A.S.K. were the good guys, who were the baddies?

• VENOM
• The Decepticons
• Cobra

Complete the next line of the theme tune: Fog, I’m the one who made the bet...

• And we'll fly on the white wings of the wind
• Fog is my name and I could play with my life in many ways
• And I know we'll be exactly right on time

He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe, had a cowardly cat. What was his name?

• Cringer
• Battlecat
• Fisto

G Force took part in the Battle of the Planets, what was their ship called?

• Phoenix
• Enterprise
• Dai X

In Duck Tales, Scrooge McDucks nephews lived with him. What were their names?

• Huey, Dewey and Louie
• Meg Mog and Og
• Dewey, Louie and Webby

Who rode Swift-Wind, a winged Unicorn?

• Teela
• Queen Angella
• She-Ra

Who played Inspector Gadget in the live action film?

• Matthew Broderick
• Steve Martin
• Neil Tennant

And following on, who was Inspector Gadget's nemesis?

• Dr Evil
• Dr Claw
• Dr Doom

Who voiced the Wombles in their 1970's TV shows?

• Bernard Cribbins
• Nigel Havers
• Peter Cushing

Name the show that featured this spaceship

• Fireball XL5
• Terrahawks
• Star Fleet

Whats your name? (so I can praise the winners!)

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Good luck and I hope it triggers some memories of some great shows from when you were little!

Disco disco disco... coop of chickens?

We do lots of endurance activities with the children. Most of these involve outdoors activity of some sort. In the case of swimming, the exertion on my part is quite high- I have to drag him to the car, drag him to the changing rooms, have a fight to get him changed and then stop him escaping before the lesson starts.

Last night however we entered a new realm of endurance activity with the boys first school disco. Badged as a family fun evening, there was a disco and then a few token games with some stickers as prizes. There is no other word for it, the event was harrowing.

Of course the school did it's part, as it usually does. Nobody from the establishment was guarding the entry and exit from the school and given the boys habit of fleeing at speed (and more recently, his friends baby sister toddling for the exit), we were kept on out toes. Although the chap loves dancing at home, at the disco he decided that tearing around like a nutter was the order of the day.

All the other little kids weren't purple in the face and dripping with sweat but then they weren't practising for the 4 by 100m relay race. Inevitably at one point the running and dancing got a little vigorous and I had to intervene and stop a punch up. The boy dragged me to the curtained window and shouted, "If you don't let me play, I'm going to show you the chickens!" and with that, he twitched the curtains, showing the schools chicken coop.

I've never been threatened with the threat of viewing poultry before, this parenting lark is full of surprises and new experiences. I must admit to laughing and then the lad disappeared off into the crowd, to hang out with a girl who was twice his age but appeared to know his name. He's his grandfathers grandchild, that's for sure, a lady's man to his very core.

The Daddacool Show Episode 3

Failing to have a steak. Twice

I'm not normally one for naval gazing and when your stomach is as large as mine, that's probably for the best really but even I'm beginning to think our trip to the Hawksmoor Steak restaurant off of Covent Garden is fated not to happen. If having one of their steaks was enough to make Giles Coren weep, not having one is pretty much having the same effect on me.

the steak prevention service

Our first attempted visit a few months back was thwarted by the London riots and rescheduled for last night. I was more than a little confounded by the scene I was met with outside the place though. A total of 3 fire appliances (is that the right word?) were parked outside, with one over enthusiastic chap going up and down in the extendible basket. As I optimistically hoped (no offence) that it was either Patagonia or Pineapple on fire, the firemen men bravely entered the very eatery I was hoping to eat in.

I can tell you that the old blitz spirit is alive and well and living in me when it comes to food, as I was willing to risk the potential towering inferno in the name of top scoff. Sadly it was not to be, and my dreams drained away like the water from the fire hoses were draining into the gutter.

Springing into action, the crack team of PR totty that organised the trip (this was a Shell V-Power Network of Champions meet up by the way) made a couple of phone calls. Bearing in mind booking a group into the Hawksmoor requires some forethought as there is a very long lead time on bookings (probably because that Giles Coren is gently sobbing in ecstasy in the corner taking up tonnes of space or something), it seemed as though the ladies were omniscient and actually had staff back in the office at 7pm with a restaurant contingency plan in place. Just in case the one they'd booked happened to catch fire.


Within ten minutes we were sitting in Asia De Cuba, the swanky but slightly confused restaurant in 60 St Martins Field, a very posh hotel. It was posh enough to make we wonder how they'd got us a table at that sort of notice. Asian Cuban fusion isn't something I'd normally consider but the nosh was top, even if we did have a rather unsightly disagreement with one of the waiters over whether his mojitos were indeed the best in London or whether the Mexican on Brick Lane did them better. Rather than chuckling at the comparison, he demanded to know the name of the Mexican and made comments that he would soon travel there to sample the quality of their mojitos. Whether petulance or dedication to duty, this didn't put me off the steak, duck, black cod, tuna, tempura prawns or anything else.

Still, I will get a sodding steak at Hawksmoor at some point in the future. Maybe.

I could walk 5(hundred) miles

I did something today that would have had a number of people looking at me like I was some sort of looney. I had a course on assertiveness over in Hatfield. For those of you who either don't know or more likely don't care, Hatfield is about 5 miles from St Albans. Rather than getting the bus or driving, I decided to walk it. They day was clement, my feet my own and I was up nice and early.

I like walking and it's one of the pleasures I have now days in my own company. Going for a walk with the kids is a bit different, there is always peril round every corner. The peril ranges from dog poos, to roads, conkers, spiders, the opportunity for spiders or just the very real threat of tired legs. Whilst walks with the kids can be fun, they're seldom what I'd call relaxing in any way shape manner or form.

So I set off at around 7am with a spring in my step and a whistle on my lips and must say I felt as good about myself when I arrived and hour and a half later. Google Maps tells me it was 6.6 miles and I won't argue as the cycleway signs were a little disingenuous. At one point they told me I had 2.5 miles to go on two separate occasions that were 15 minutes apart.

It was good to get home in the evening and see the family though as it seemed as if I had been away for some considerable time!

Letting the side down

The boy is rapidly approaching the end of his first term at school. I'm not 100% sure whether reception counts as the first year of school or not but I'm going with it. The constant bids for freedom that were his signature mark at nursery seem to have abated somewhat and aside from the odd incident with scissors, he seems to be pottering along nicely.

We're working on his letters and reading at home, and it's slow progress. I was heartened recently when a work colleague said her sons school only gave the kids picture books with no words in reception.

The boys love of action and adventure and superheroes is helping here, he seems a lot more inclined to do educational stuff if it's tied to subjects that interest him. It reminds me a bit of some of those cringe-worthy public information comic strips Marvel and DC used to run in the 1970's about stranger danger or smoking. Fortunately Marvel do a Spider-Man comic that's aimed at his age group, so we have a bit of help there.

Even so, I can't help but feel the school are letting the side down when their classroom assistants make a basic error on a comic strip the lads drawn. And no, I'm not referring to the incorrect spelling of Spider-Man, with a hyphen. The boys lovingly crafted 5 page comic strip is defaced on the very first page with a large crossed out attempt by the classroom assistant's to spell the word "friends". Any bonus points for the correct use of an apostrophe disappeared out of the window with that!

Still, it could have been worse, a year ago, he would have screwed the whole thing up in frustration and thrown it in the bin, so at least we've had progress there!

It's funny really, for all the effort we put into trying to find out what's going on at school, we're met with a stonewall of "Not anything. Can't remember.", so we only really get to find out when he brings some of his creations home. In case you're wondering, those two are Spider-Man's friends. Spider-Man himself is on page two.

The Daddacool Show Ep2

Standing up for yourself

I may have alluded to it in a previous post, but the boy has no trouble standing up for himself against us. It's other people that he seems to have trouble with, blindly doing what other little kids tell him to do and then acting extremely puzzled when we ask him why on earth he did such a monumentally daft thing.

It's a delicate balancing act though when you're out and about between being the protective parent and letting your kids develop and find their own way in the world. A combination of a cup of hot tea and open toed sandals made the choice for me at softplay the other day.

The boy, and by obvious extension his tomboy little sister, is extremely rumbustious when it comes to physical play. They like nothing more than hurtling down things, bouncing off of other things and climbing up stuff I'd think twice over.

When Fifi accidentally fell down the stairs last week (no harm done I should add), she bounced round the bends in the staircase on her slow-motion plummet and I half expected her to jump up and shout "again again!" at me. She didn't but the application of a bag of sweets showed it was shock making her cry rather than broken limbs. Apparently wifey was always prone to falling down the stairs when she was little, it must be inherited.

So when it comes to soft play, both the children are often found in the over 5's area, despite being 4 and two and three quarters respectively.

A great role model. Apparently.

I was sitting down, sipping a nice cup of tea when I heard the usual ear piercing Fifi shriek. I looked up, not unduly concerned since these shrieks can be caused by anything, from something that resembles a spider, to a lack of immediate biscuits. A bigger boy was standing menacingly over her, having taken some play balls off of her. Before I could put my tea down and get my sandals on, the boy stepped between them. standing in a stance that must have come straight from Kung Fu Panda. Legs apart and slightly bent, arm extended with a clenched fist, he shouted at the bigger boy to leave his sister alone. The bigger boy stood there slightly flummoxed. The boy was considerably smaller than the bully but looked furious. He's always stuck up for his sister, which at times makes it very difficult to discipline her but in this instance she was very very pleased.

By this point I'd strolled over to look at them all through the rope mesh and the bigger boy thought better of trying to thump my kids with an adult watching. The tense stand off continued for a few seconds, then the bully boy turned tail and fled up the foam ramp of backing down, along to the rope bridge of humiliation The boy had won!

Afterwards, whilst munching a biscuit and drinking a well earned Fruitshoot, the boy told me "He had better kung fu than me but I scared him off." He knew that the bigger lad could have thumped him but his instincts for protecting his little sister had proved too strong to ignore.

I've no idea how we've managed it, it's probably down to wifey, but we seem to be doing okay on this parenting lark if this incident is anything to go by...

An Open letter to George Obsborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer

EDIT: If you agree with the sentiments below, please sign this Government e-petition. Thanks!


Dear George,

I understand you've got a lot on your plate at the moment. Inflation is up, both the real inflation and the much lower one we use publicly so we don't all run around like headless chickens in blind panic. People are unemployed, the DEFICIT is on everyones lips. You've even had some personal problems with crack whores in the press to keep you occupied in the spare moments you must occasionally get.

You did your big party conference speech yesterday and it must have seemed gratifying- lots of people have said it was the best speech you've ever given.

There was one issue that you didn't address though that is giving consternation to many millions of people, and that's the way you're planning to organise the savings on child benefit. None of us parents have issue with the need to save money, given the state the ecomonies in, but a lot of us do have issues with the way you're doing it.

Based on current tax thresholds and personal tax free allowances, a family where both parents work could theoretically have a joint income of £84,950 and still get their child benefit, while a family where there is only one wage earner could earn as little (relative to the other household) as £42,476 and get absolutely nothing.

Obviously this is an unfair way to deal with the proposed cuts, wouldn't you agree? I have a suspiscion that the problem is in the creaking HMR&C IT systems. Can their database not match up earnings from the same postal address? Can it not calculate household income, rather than two individuals income? I'm no database whizz but I imagine anyone with a passing knowledge of SQL could run a query that shows income at a given address? It wouldn't take much to weed out people living with parents etc from that would it?

Lets not deal with hypothetical extremes though, lets base it on some average earning figures. I understand that in 2011 the average individuals income in the UK was £22,800 a year. This means that, factoring in the annual allowance, an average two person household earning the average wage will have £35,456 net take home pay after tax and national insurance. This is based on a joint gross salary of £45,200 and an individual unadjusted personal allowance of £7,475 for each of the two parents.

A family with one wage earner, lets say earning £45,200, to put it in the 40% bracket and on parity with the other household, will take home £33,048. So the single working parent family are already two and a half thousand pounds worse off, due a combination of some tax at 40% and only one tax free personal allowance. That's not the issue though, so lets not get sidetracked.

Tell me this Mr Osbourne, how is it equitable to allow the working couple who already have over £2,500 more cash in hand a year to claim child benefit to the tune of £1,055 for one child or £1,752 for two children, that a household with one working parent but the same gross income will not recieve under your plan?

The answer is obvious: it isn't equitable. And I hope that you will revisit this with all due alacrity. Please feel free to drop me an email, there is a link on the right, and we can discuss how you can dig yourself out of this hole you've found yourself in.

I'll tell you that the system needs to be means tested if doing so is affordable, and if that creates more cost than it saves, the proposals need to be scrapped until we have a HMR&C that is fit for purpose.

Kind regards,

Alex

Drop the school leaving age to 14?!

Chris Woodhead, the ex chief inspector of schools in England is at it again with a seemingly bonkers riposte to the governments exploration of raising the school leaving age to 18, as detailed in an exclusive interview with the Times. If, like me, you don't like paying the Murdoch empire a penny, the BBC has a report on it. The headlines you'll see will be about Woodhead's suggestion of dropping the leaving age to 14. Of course there is a lot more to it than that but we do live in a soundbite society don't we?

The cynic in me says 18 is a heck of a lot better than 16 because currently, as we enter the double dip of the double dip recession,the largest group of unemployed are the young school leavers. So obviously it's in the governments interest to keep all those thousands upon thousands of school leavers off the unemployed statistics for another year or two. But I'm trying ever so hard not to be cynical.

No matter how some want to couch academic failure as deferred success, want kids to play uncompetitive sport or whatever, at the heart of the matter, there are a lot of kids that aren't suited to academic education past a certain point. It doesn't make it any different if you give it a name or call it a syndrome, school doesn't make them happy and they'd rather be off elsewhere doing something else.

I can remember this from my own education. Well before the end of the 5th form, there were kids in my year at school helping their dad's delivery business, or helping in the family business in other ways because the school system wasn't geared up for them just like it wasn't geared up for their parents.

Of course Chris Woodhead isn't suggesting we abandon 14 year olds to work on building sites or deliver sofas. He uses words like apprenticeship and further vocational education. This may be as hopeful as he suggests the government are being, already there are lots of comments about how difficult it is to get placements for apprentices training at the moment, let alone after a huge swath of 14 year old are let loose on the market. I'm unaccountably reminded of the world of the Tech College that Tom Sharp pictures so well in his Wilt novels too.

Woodhead paints the two diametrically opposed positons as reality (his view) versus idealistic hope (the governments view) but both have elements that are laudable. Is it really wrong to try and educate people to better themselves? History tells us it was only 250 years ago that the fight to get any education at all for a lot of kids who would otherwise be down a mine or working in a factory during the industrial revolution actually began. If you go back three or four generations in my family, we were all tenant farmers. Is it a big step backwards taking so many children out of academic education at a relatively early age? An age where they might be more swayed at earning 50 quid a week working than actually learning things that they might regret not knowing in later life?

Getting access to education later in life is nearly always expensive and time consuming, are 14 year olds really old and mature enough to make that decision? Conversely if they're not in school due to truanting, does it make a real difference?

I'm torn on the subject. I suspect what it will mean is a large number of boys leaving school at the earliest opportunity. Will this lead to a widening of the influence of public schools in providing leaders, both political and in business or is that a moot point?

On the other hand, will it mean that with the disruptive influence removed from the classroom, we can begin upping the standards in GCSE's, past the farcical state where an A is so meaningless they've had to come up with an A* grade?

What do you think on the subject? I'll leave you with the words of Pink Floyd from 1979, from Another Brick in the Wall Part 2...

Endurance Holiday

We've just come back from a rather entertaining but tiring weekend break at Center Parcs. It didn't start well: the bathroom was filthy, the apartment smelled strongly of wee in two of the rooms, with some dubious stains on the carpet. Of course as we got there at almost 9pm, both of the kids were asleep and after unpacking it was too much aggravation to kick up a fuss and get moved. Fortunately housekeeping redeemed themselves the next morning.

We travelled to all the entertainments on foot and scooter, which given how vague the signs were for the most part, was a gentle introduction to the endurance.

Most of the endurance was participated in via the sub tropical swimming paradise or the sub paradise tropical swimming as a mentally reorganised the words to. The pools were pretty good, the water slides suffered from the same baffling signage as the whole resort- I went up several flights of stairs to come down in front of the family, only to end up somewhere else entirely, surrounded by teenagers. Three different lifeguards asked me if I was okay as I tried to suss whether going down the slides was better than trying to force my way against the tide of humanity.

Four hours later we emerged from the water, older, wiser and more tired than you can possibly imagine. Wifey and I then endured a walk back to the apartment with considerable moaning, whining and shrieking from the children. Day two was pretty much a repeat of day one, with some astonishing leaps on in the ability of the boys swimming. Considering he normally kicks up a fuss when he gets water in his eyes, and now he's happily dunking himself under the water, even though the endurance required was epic, the trip was well worth it!