Please reply in English next time

Earlier this year I must have e-mailed the Department for Culture, Media and Sport - or at least filled out a form, petition or wrote something somewhere.

What I sent was obviously something to do with children’s television and the state of it in the UK - or at least the lack of homegrown children’s tv outside of the BBC.

Below is the response I just received - although it doesn’t really give me any clue to what I may, or may not have asked them in the original e-mail/form/petition…

See if you can make any sense of it - but from now on - please reply in English! Or if you can’t manage full on plain English - how about something that’s at least understandable to non-political normal human beings.

Thank you for your e-mail of May 2009 regarding the level of output for Children’s television programmes.

In our interim report, published on 29 January, we identified children’s content for all ages, but especially for the over 10s, as one of the priorities to be addressed by the new framework for public service content that is being designed. This would include content both transmitted on television and on new media platforms.

This approach was supported by the evidence set out in Ofcom’s statement on public service broadcasting, “Putting Viewers First”, published on 21 January, which reaffirmed their view, first set out in 2007 in their report into the children’s TV sector, that there was a market failure, especially for older teenagers and young adults, which would need to be addressed.

We recognise that this is a key area of concern for both parliamentarians and stakeholder and we will be outlining our proposed approach to this problem in the final Digital Britain report, which is due to be published shortly.

I hope this information helps

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What’s happening to me?

When I was a teenager at school I was (and there really is no other way of saying this) a little git.

I was cheeky, I talked back to the teachers and would refuse to do things I didn’t like the idea of. I was suspended from lessons (but never school) several times - usually for refusing to go to those “pointless” detentions.

The main problem I had with school was that I just didn’t see the point in it. I was constantly being asked to do things I didn’t really see the point in and it didn’t help that the teachers got annoyed with me when I asked them to justify their reasons for asking me to do it.

I’ve always had something of a problem with authority and authority figures - especially being asked to do things I’m not convinced are of any real benefit to me.

I’m still a little bit like that but as I get older and (painfully) rapidly closer to the big 3 0 I can’t help but see things from the teachers point of view.

I now have two children in school - one in reception (foundation stage) and the other in year three (key stage two).

When my children were young, before they started school I was adamant I wouldn’t make them do homework - that, if they ever got a lot I would stand up for them and tell the teacher I disagree with homework and demand they don’t give my children any.

But  age, maturity - whatever you want to call it has mellowed me and actually I can see the point of homework - it also helps that my daughter (son is too young for homework at the moment) actually really enjoys it.

In fact some of the homework my daughter gets can be a lot of fun - I oft times enjoy making boats, creating simple animations, teaching her how to write articles and stories etc…

In fact - getting involved in parents evenings, school events and activities as well as helping my daughter with her homework and reading through some of her school work at the end of time has really made me wish I worked harder while I was at school.

I’ve decided that blogging for me is the chance to do those - home time - reports (remember I write for a living) that I never bothered with while I was in full time education.

Photo credit: Classroom Chairs (seen on homepage) by James Sarmiento - Creative Commons via Flickr.

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Who am I?

A friend asked me how I would rank the places and things that impact my identity the other day.

The concept behind it was to rank the things that make me who I am in order - starting with national identity and then gradually working down the list.

So the first thing on the list for me, as a British citizen, would be … well British but the concept then allows for anything to be put in the order of identity after that.

So it could be Geek, Musician, Drummer or even English, Magician or Lunatic. I’ve personally gone for geek as, in terms of personality I think of myself as a geek before I think of myself as English (even though I was born in England and spent the first 18 years of my life there).

Anyway, I’ve been thinking long and hard about it and this is the list I’ve been able to come up with so far - it may change depending on my mood.

• Father
• British
• Geek
• English
• Journalist
• BBC
• Jersey
• Blogger
• New Media/Web
• Drummer
• Hemel Hempstead

I don’t actually factor European in there at all - anywhere - mainly because (and don’t get me wrong I like the European idea) I don’t feel European or any connection with the continental idea of Europe.

When I think of Europe I get all stereotypical and imagine old French philosophers sitting at a cafe smoking and debating the world. I’ve never lived in France and only visited once and I’ve visited the rest of Europe (with the exception of Portugal) even less.

So my knowledge, understanding and relationship to Europe is limit to two week holidays in Portugal, having a cousin from Germany and a day trip to France in Primary School.

Anyway - I did toy with the idea of showing this list in other ways but in the end a good old fashioned list was the best way of displaying a few items.

What defines you? My wife suggested that I didn’t need to make a list as the tag cloud pretty much defines me already, that what I wrote about on my blog was a measure of who I am already - but to me that’s more a measure of what I like than who I am.

Here is the tag cloud as of now:

apple Arts audio BBC BBC iPlayer blog blogging british channel4 comedy Design download Entertainment facebook google interface internet iplayer ipod itunes itv James May Jeremy Clarkson jeremyclarkson jersey Last.fm Media mobile Music newmedia News Podcast Radio stig Technology Television top gear topgear torchwood tv UK United Kingdom Video writing youtube

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Paper planes with the kids

The purpose of this blog, its reason for being, its mission statement is to ‘build a guide to surviving life in the 21st Century, from a geek perspective’.

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Nearly back to normal

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Too much of a good thing?

I keep all my digital data on an external hard drive - that’s movies, photos, music, writing - everything. Or at least I did until it died last week.

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What happened to childhood?

My seven and a half year old daughter is in the final stages of year two in Primary School. She’s just reached the point where they give her homework and I’m shocked.

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Time for spelling reform

First let me apologise, actually no I won’t apologise, let me warn you that this post will be full of words spelt in a non-traditional British English way. That said - let’s move on.

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Sharing my crap

I write thousands of words a week. Some of it is good but most is pretty run of the mill. But there’s also a LOT of crap and that is what I want to share with you today.
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