Selfsufficientish.com

http://www.leavethemkidsalone.com/

This is utterly unbelievable, I am in a total rant after my Dad's pumpkins have been stolen so I need to share this one with you.

I can't believe 'they' are softening our kids up to accept this kind of intrusion as normal.

Have any of your kids been done ? - sold on the idea that it is easy to flash a fingerprint than to remember a library card.

I've been ranting about it on my blog for yonks, as has purpledragon.

Don't get us started here as well!

that's discusting

big brother is indeed watching you! - needs a good poke in the eye!

Stonehead wrote:I've been ranting about it on my blog for yonks, as has purpledragon.

Don't get us started here as well!

I didn't know you had a blog, Stoney, or PurpleDragon. Where is it? Is it a top-secret blog that you don't tell anybody about? My husband's got one of those.

Don't get too excited about my blog, Chickpea - it's not that great. Stoney's is well worth a visit though, as is Hedgewizards.

PurpleDragon wrote:Don't get too excited about my blog, Chickpea - it's not that great. Stoney's is well worth a visit though, as is Hedgewizards.

Such modesty! I like PurpleDragon's blog.

So do I... There are some great blogs by ishers....

gosh thanks

I've found them both now. They're both good. I especially like the appearrance of yours Stoney, what a great design. Not that PD's one isn't well designed! But when you've seen a lot of blogs there aren't many that jump out and Stoney's does. Great use of white space. Why don't you ask Andy to add them to the Blogs page on the main site?

Just asked daughter number 1 about this. Seems she is very aware of the fingerprinting thing... which of course had my eyes bugging out of my head as I know nuffin!!!!... She says other than the mothers day gift she made me in preschool, she has never had her fingerprints taken, and she tells me it was first introduced in the US to counter truants and child abductions and is linked to an automated sms message that is sent to advise parents their child has not arrived at school, and provides principals with an immediate print out after start-time of who is absent...

She went into quite a lot of detail... explaining that the kids have to place their thumb on a blue light and leave it there till it turns green, and then they can go through to school. She says the rich private schools in the US have trialled them, because the equipment costs heaps and it probably wouldn't be affordable for smaller schools and she hasn't heard anything about it coming to Australia.

She says the UK introduced it to save 15 minutes "teaching time" that is wasted calling the roll???????

I have just had quite an education. Am really quite blown away....

I guess I don't object to folks being held responsible, so really am swinging like a pendulum on this one. I don't think they should be taken deviously, but at the same time when you know you can be held accountable, I think you tend to be a tad more careful about where you put your hands and how you interact with different environments. A lot of teens learn that the hard way, but I can't really see how a 3 year old would actually learn that... It is almost like they are being set up to get caught making mistakes.

.... Imagine if they were to suddenly start tracing all the litter left laying about, or recyclable items that are just dumped... or hypodermics not properly disposed of...could possibly short circuit a lot of abuse...

but as with many things, when is it appropriate? Do we wait for kids to do the wrong thing and then caution them, or do we raise them knowing that if they do the wrong thing, they can, and will, be caught?

Dunno - it really is a tough one, I think.

Chickpea wrote: I especially like the appearrance of yours Stoney, what a great design.

It's down to a good Wordpress theme called Regulus 2.1. It's one of the two reasons I went for Wordpress.com - the other was that it's free!

The Regulus theme has the look I'd design myself, but why spend all the time doing it when Ben Gillbanks has already come up with such an elegant solution? All I have to do is tinker here and there, then write any old guff that comes to mind.

The only thing I don't like is that it's not possible to customise the length of the sidebar contents. I'd like two or three entries under each subhead rather than the whole lot. But that's a minor quibble.

Mine is just from blog.co.uk

I was talking to Tracy from werain.co.uk and was impressed by her layout, so I decided to try and get into keeping folks up to date with us online. Because I'm a complete numpty where computers are concerned I just grabbed something that I could manage and have stuck with it.