Introduction - I am naming some names in this piece. If the parties concerned do not like the publicity or the comments, then there is a simple answer - pay me IMMEDIATELY the money that you owe me for the work that I have legitimately undertaken and produced and delivered by the date agreed, and I will amend this article accordingly. No apology will be forthcoming from me for publishing the article in the first place. And I will settle for nothing less than complete payment - though the comments below do make certain allowances which should be taken into account.
Definition - someone who works full time (= employment, even on a freelance basis) and does not get paid anything for the job that he/she undertakes is a SLAVE! Someone who gets someone to undertake work for nothing (even with the promise of financial reward for the work) is not merely a scammer, but is ENCOURAGING AND SUPPORTING SLAVERY! Think about that for five minutes!
Status - I dislike (intensely) being self-employed. I also did not want to find myself forced to live on government handouts. I want(ed) a full time salaried job in IT. After my heart attack in 2008 I found that the number of people prepared to even consider offering me opportunities in that area was very low. It could be down to age, health considerations (I am fully recovered incidentally) or the international economic crisis (I saw summat on CNNI on Spain's unemployed this week - gruesome and unacceptable - time for action, not for a permanent shrug of the shoulders from the inept politicians and the gamblers on the world's stock exchanges!).
Anyway in 2011 I decided to start working as a translator (something I had done before on an occasional basis). With my background as a modern languages graduate and a former secondary school languages teacher in England, there should have been been possibilities.
I checked out my competence at the Frankfurt branch of the leading language service provider Kern AG (they were suitably impressed) and filled out the form with which they provided me. I have picked up a good amount of work from them - in fact they are my best customer. I have also scouted the Internet for opportunities. I have picked up contacts in Spain, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Cyprus, Belgium, the UK, the USA and Austria among others. By the end of October there were no complaints about the volume of work. In fact there was in September and October probably far too much.
On reaching October 30th, I had worked 87 out of the previous 91 days (that includes weekends), and a lot of the days were 12-13 hours long. No matter how talented you are the demands on your concentration are intense, and sometimes you are prone to error due to tiredness rather than incompetence. But legitimate companies should have ways to deal with errors in the work that they receive (see later - this point is crucial).
Methodology - to produce the work I follow a 6-stage structured process. This never changes.
1. Read the piece to be translated.
2. Prepare a first draft.
3. Working from the original and the first draft, produce the body of the translation.
4. Check the work against the original, correct grammar and spelling, and enhance the phraseology and choice of vocabulary.
5. Recheck for grammatical errors and incorrect phraseology. Look for further enhancements.
6. Read the near final translation strictly as a piece of English, ignoring the original. Where it sounds artificial, not fluent, or like a too strict translation (i.e. it sounds for instance like German or French or Dutch English rather than UK English) change it referring to the original where necessary.
I no longer use computer program generated translators like Trados. My copy of Trados (which needs updating to the latest version - I do not have the money to buy it) is on my old PC which broke down at the start of 2012 (and I do not have the money available to repair it). Trying to load it on the laptop has proved impossible due to permissions required on the laptop not being accessible. And anyway I was not that good at using Trados, and the IT specialist that I was for over 20 years was not overly impressed with the software!
The translation is sent after the 6 stage process described above almost invariably on the date agreed with the client. If I am going to be late, even by a couple of hours, they are informed accordingly. There is usually (but not always) a contract involved which gives the date and time for receipt and, significantly (see later) the date for payment for the work to be issued.
Despite my experience as a linguist, despite the rigid procedure adopted as above, I cannot expect perfection 100% of the time. I have also expectations from the client side, at least when I am dealing with an agency. Along these lines:
1. Quality control. Upon receipt of the work, it is proofread.
2. If there are obvious errors it is returned to me for correction.
3. Where I accept the errors (that means the recommended changes are in fact errors and not simply alternatives which the proofreader prefers for personal reasons), the translation is corrected.
4. The "final" copy is returned to the client who then sends it to the customer.
I have no concern about having a proofreader correcting my work. This ensures that the final piece will be of the quality that is expected by the client. There is no pride involved here. We are not infallible. Sometimes in the words of the David Powter song "You've had a bad day" - sometimes no matter how hard you work, how structured your methodology is and how much you try to concentrate, you miss things. When under stress, working hours that are far too long, and not taking some breaks as you should, the quality is occasionally substandard - and considerably below your own expectations.
My view is that these should be picked up in stage 1 in the client expectations (quality control). Normally they are.
In my experience there is a 97-98% level of efficiency in providing the work that meets the client customer's requirements. There have, however, been 6 substandard pieces (2 of them in the same week in October, obviously the product of overwork and stress) issued to the customers out of over 200 produced in the 20 months that I have been undertaking this work full time. My normal policy, if this occurs, is to either accept a reduced payment or to withdraw any claim for payment entirely. I value my professional reputation. I am also an honourable person, I only wish that I could say the same for some of the people with whom I am dealing!
Payment and invoicing - invoices are usually issued on the day after delivery of the translation, although with regular customers I occasionally leave them and send later an invoice covering a number of pieces of work. The invoice states (in line with what I was informed when I started out) that payment is expected "within 14 days". This needs amending to "by xx/xx/xxxx" where "xx/xx/xxxx" is the due date stated in the contract.
Most clients are reliable when it comes to making payment, in fact one of the three who are currently negligent used to be very reliable in the past (see later). One client who notably does not issue contracts has proved the post reliable payer of the lot - so the lack of a contract is not in fact necessarily a "bad thing".
Payment dates vary. Often the standard is on the final day of the following month - although my customers in France and Belgium (see also later) insist upon the final day of the month after 2 clear months. As long as you know where you stand, this should not be a problem.
Grounds for non-payment - if the work is substandard, then there should be dispute procedures established where payment can be challenged. I have no problem with this. As stated above I will accept reduced payment, or even complete denial of payment where necessary.
There are points that need establishing here though.
1. Challenging payment of the invoice should occur before the due date has been met. It is ridiculous to leave a piece of work unchallenged for something like 2-3 months before raising issues and claiming inadequacies in the work. Frankly it looks like a way of copping out on due payment. "Honourable", business-like it is not!
2. The translation deemed "substandard" and the invoice attached to it should stand as independent entities from any other translations and invoices associated with them. That means that there should be no delay in meeting payment on the the due date of work that is not under dispute. To do otherwise is a clear violation of accepted business practices.
On the boxes of tomatoes principle. If a supplier sends boxes of tomatoes to a distributor with separate invoices on a weekly basis, and all those boxes contain satisfactory items for 5 weeks, any box sent in the 6th week with rotting produce must be judged on its own merits, and any dispute regarding payment should apply purely to that delivery.
Where this is a significant issue (the receiving of rotten fruit), then the distributor can look also at ending the trade relationship with the supplier. But refusing to pay for goods that were delivered in good order before the problem arose is unacceptable, as these met the contract requirements originally agreed.
That is my understanding of the situation following (unofficial) discussions with an acquaintance who understands legal business practices within Germany.
The current problem - As of now I am owed a sum of approximately 3,275 Euro on invoices that have been properly issued for work legitimately undertaken and completed (without notification of any challenge, see above), and which should have been paid by December 1st. In fact the due date in most of these cases is considerably before December 1st (see below).
This is not money which is surplus amounts for fun outings or buying beer - it is serious money that is needed to cover basic living costs, costs incurred by the work that I undertake (repairing the PC finally, getting up-to-date Microsoft Word software usw) and important little matters like meeting my obligations to the German tax authorities and paying health insurance! And paying off the one debt that I have taken out (interest free from a close friend).
If you are Mitt Romney, Richard Branson, Carlos Slim usw, that money is chicken-feed. To me it is my livelihood that is involved.
As of this morning I have €518 in my bank account. I have a payment of €205 due from a reliable supplier (Kern AG), which will probably arrive next week. This means that I will be able to pay the rent (late!), but insufficient funds will be available to pay my health insurance costs which are due in the middle of the month, and sufficient funds need to be in the account by January 11th. Go without medical insurance? After all it was only a heart attack that I had in 2008, so should I worry too much about the medication that I am taking?
Ask my wife for money? She has nothing spare - there are other obligations in the house that she has to meet (utility and telephone bills, food usw).
Take out a loan? On what basis - I have no guarantee that the money that I am due will be paid, and why should I incur interest charges because other people aren't paying me? If they are prepared to pay the interest charges I might consider it. But this taking out loans without due consideration of non-payment in the future is one of the major reasons why the world landed in an economic crisis in 2008.
Because other people want to snort economic heroin regardless of the consequences does not mean that I have to follow suit. I am not that daft!
So where do I go with this?
I have no satisfactory answer. I SHOULD NOT EVEN BE IN THE SITUATION WHERE I HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THIS! The money is due, it should be paid immediately, there are no acceptable grounds for non-payment, and that is the only satisfactory resolution to the problem. If I were dealing with honourable people, the problem would also not exist!
Did I mention lawyers maybe? I have already sought legal advice unofficially. The view that I heard expressed was that where 2,700 Euros worth was retrievable, but as there would be potentially substantial legal costs to find .... It remains an option though not one that I would choose to follow.
The negligent payers
1. A name that makes me wince whenever I think about it - Ralph William. His name came off an advert on translationdirectory.com in July 2011. I produced 13 pieces of work of undisputed quality for him (one further I withdrew). An invoice was issued to him on 23/8/11 for US$ 657.98 (approximately €480 at the time).
Since that time I have heard twice from him saying that he would pay me as soon as possible, but the last of these was at the start of 2012. In the second he also indicated that he had had to have surgery, hence the delay.
This seems to me to be an unlikely story. I suspect that he has done some work as a translator himself and has been using other people to produce work for him, claim the work as his own and keep the money for himself. In other words an out and out scammer.
Where he is, address, telephone number usw I do not possess. Only an email address. I sent an email asking for more details, needless to say I got no reply. Obviously I should have been more careful, and not done the work for him in the first place. As no contract was issued either, he could deny any such arrangement, although in case of any legal investigation, I have kept every one of his emails!
If he does want to redeem his reputation, he can write to me, send his address and other details, and send the money by direct credit transfer (SWIFT - I am not prepared to wait any longer than necessary) to the bank account in Germany given on the invoice. And for the record the German tax authorities will be informed about the invoice.
If anyone knows anything further about this character, please let me know.
2. JTI Development (also known as Juristraduction) in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. They used to be extremely reliable. Since May this year they have become a perennial disaster story. They owe me €917.29 for for invoices issued in May and due for payment at the end of July, €395.70 for an invoice issued in June and due for payment at the end of August, and €185.68 for an invoice issued in August and due for payment at the end of October. Add that lot together, it comes out at €1,498.67.
There has been plenty of communication between us on this, though this tends to be principally one-way. I was told that I might expect a payment at the end of October, that was not forthcoming. I have been pursuing this ardently since with little success. Currently I have four unanswered emails awaiting replies.
The argument for the late payment (in a mail that I received earlier this year) was summat on the lines of their not receiving payment from their clients, so they could not pay me.
Frankly the second part of this statement is a non-sequitur anyway. They have received the work on the date agreed, there have been no significant questions regarding quality, and their contract with me states that the payment date would be at the end of the month following 60 days grace. Any problems for dealing with their clients should be subject to their own procedures (and the legal procedures applying in France) - I do not see that I should be affected. My side of the contract has been met (and see above for the consequences of the non-payment).
3. 2B Translated in Belgium
They may have a case but not much of one IMHO. There was one piece of work that was returned as substandard (first of a series of three) just before I was due to leave for Thailand at the end of October. I made a number of changes as requested, and pointed out that I could not (due to lack of available materials - my wife decided that taking the laptop with us was out of the question) deal with anything further for three weeks. Given also the state of exhaustion in which I found myself at the time, taking the first break in nearly two years made sense.
I received confirmation from them when I returned that they would be in touch about this piece of work - I have heard nothing further since.
They had though decided not to proceed with payment of invoices for work PROPERLY AND DULY DELIVERED AND NOT SUBJECT TO QUALITY ISSUES before the "substandard" piece of work. The first of these invoices, for €132.15 should have been paid on October 1st - before I even set to work on the "substandard" piece of work! That they forgot to pay it is not untypical. They have a habit of being late, and if I do not send them reminders that payment of invoices is due, I am unlikely to receive any money from them.
Professional organisations should be aware of when their obligations to make payments that are due - they should not need reminders.
The remaining payments (€177,05 due at the end of October for work performed in August and €986.85 due at the end of November for work carried out in September) should have been paid according to the "boxes of tomatoes" principle explained above. A total of €1,296.05 is being held back with the consequences again as described above.
Following my unofficial discussion about the questionable legality of the reasons for non-payment, I wrote a very long letter to them explaining the situation, the problems that it was causing and offering to withdraw the invoice for the disputed "substandard" work (or accepting a partial payment only). There is a precedent for this where one such piece of work was sent to Kern AG in Germany. They paid all the invoices issued before the disputed piece, all the invoices after it, and offered a partial payment for the piece in question. Which is probably as well as I would now very likely be sleeping on the street if they had not!
This letter was sent in an email to 2BT on December 16th. I have, surprise, surprise, received no reply. No money? Of course not.
Final statement - I expect some reaction from these people. Where disputes exist on work issued and the due date on invoices has not yet been reached, then I am open to negotiation. I am, I repeat, an honourable person. Unfortunately in this world where cynicism, bloody-mindedness and throwing honest hardworking people to the dogs seem to be the modus operandi, getting any sort of satisfactory response seems increasingly unlikely. And then if none is forthcoming - given the critical situation explained above .....
Sunday, 30 December 2012
Tuesday, 25 December 2012
What do you often get these days when a dictatorship disappears?
OK
1. Check out what happened in Russia for nearly 10 years after the fall of Communism.
2. Check out what happened in Iraq (and is still going on occasionally even now) after the fall of Saddam.
3. Check out what has happened in Egypt since Mubarak was removed.
4. Check out what will happen in Syria once Assad finally goes.
Answer - chaos and often violent dissent.
Of course there are exceptions that prove the rule - some Eastern European countries in the 1990s, Chile after Pinochet, Indonesia after Suharto (?), Libya now and others that you can name ....
And of course one can hardly describe the brutalities of the dictators and everything that was involved as desirable.
But the removal of an undesirable dictatorship does not necessarily lead to a better state, a thriving democracy usw. And there is the risk that in certain areas (z. B. women's rights in the "Muslim world") things will actually deteriorate!
1. Check out what happened in Russia for nearly 10 years after the fall of Communism.
2. Check out what happened in Iraq (and is still going on occasionally even now) after the fall of Saddam.
3. Check out what has happened in Egypt since Mubarak was removed.
4. Check out what will happen in Syria once Assad finally goes.
Answer - chaos and often violent dissent.
Of course there are exceptions that prove the rule - some Eastern European countries in the 1990s, Chile after Pinochet, Indonesia after Suharto (?), Libya now and others that you can name ....
And of course one can hardly describe the brutalities of the dictators and everything that was involved as desirable.
But the removal of an undesirable dictatorship does not necessarily lead to a better state, a thriving democracy usw. And there is the risk that in certain areas (z. B. women's rights in the "Muslim world") things will actually deteriorate!
Postscript (December 28th, 2021) - check out what has happened in Libya since I wrote this item. At one point ISIS was threatening to take over large chunks of it, and the civil war there is yet another example of the chaos which follows the fall of a dictator!
Monday, 24 December 2012
Securing schools
Not really my place to start telling Americans what to do with their gun laws. Why anyone would need an automatic rifle / handgun which shoots 30 rounds at a time for domestic use (yes, I know you found your neighbour who is supposed to be a strict Christian in bed with your wife, but 30 rounds sounds a bit like overkill? Maybe? Well OK, you would have preferred 60) ....
Anyway your heart goes out to the parents of the young children brutally slain in Connecticut. Words fail me as to what would drive anyone to kill children like that. Some things in this often brutal world are beyond comprehension.
One suggestion that has arisen about preventing a repeat of this comes from the NRA in the US. NRA (explained principally for the benefit of foreigners who do not know this fact) stands for National Rifle Association (the "N" does not stand for "Nutty" or "Nauseating" incidentally), and they are strong advocates for the Second Amendment rights in the US constitution which is all to do with the right to bear arsenals - sorry "arms"!
Their suggestion involves essentially putting armed guards in front of every school in the US. Ignoring comments that I have read from seditious American "Leftists" in the past few days that on the day of the notorious Columbine High School massacre back in 1999 that the school in question did have armed guards "protecting" the place (so the suggestion will not necessarily work ....) - and after all denying the constitutional rights of the likes of Adam Lanza to bear arms would obviously have been a mistake - I will look at school security in the light of my experiences as a teacher in England back in the 1970s.
I have extremely good memory powers, and unfortunately I can still remember much about the school where I spent most of my teaching career in the late 70s - "unfortunately" as the nightmares often still come back.
To bear in mind - no two schools are structured or administered the same way.
This particular school had been amalgamated from two separate schools on the same site in a fit of passionate Socialist idealism which regarded pragmatism as an unfortunate obstacle that gets in the way of clear idealistic thinking and planning (why they do not apply the thinking when it comes to bankers wrecking economies usw, I never do get - education seems fine for idealism, politicos tend to lose this idealism when it comes to taxation & regulations usw for some strange reason).
Logistically it was summat of a nightmare. There were two sets of buildings. To the front of one set was a main road. Go 500 metres and turn left, go down another not insignificant road for about 200 metres, you came to the other set of buildings. Surrounding the buildings on the other sides were the fairly extensive sports fields - football (North American = soccer) pitches for the boys, hockey (North American = field hockey) pitches for the girls, in summer (no jokes here about the summer in England incidentally - in 1975 and 1976 there were real summers!) these could be converted into athletic tracks or cricket pitches.
At one end the school was definitely fenced off from the private property and public walkways to be found there. I imagine that it was also the case at the other end (I never went to find out), but as a lot of kids used to walk home that way at the end of the school day, I imagine that any fence was not too effective at providing 100% security.
There were meanwhile at least five entrances from the roads to the school and a parking bay where school buses dropped off kids who were brought in daily from the surrounding villages. This bay was conveniently situated next to the school, so there was no requirement to go to any main entrance from there.
With me so far?
Your challenge at this point is to turn this establishment, at least as it then stood, into a secure property which security guards can protect.
Fence off the outside, close all the entrances except one, put in metal detectors ..... Fine, that quick and easy, eh? Think of airports, restrict areas of movement from the outside and you are there?
Give me that as an answer and you get sent home with extra homework!
Right to start with - the fence. This has to be secure. Vandal-proof. Might I suggest electronic fencing. Electronic fencing will keep villains out, right? Not voting against electronic fencing personally, but remember that what serves to keep villains out (getting frazzled as they try to break in) also impacts other less villainous individuals.
This is a school, remember. Some kids are curious to the point of being utterly stupid. And sticking up a very large sign saying "do not touch the fence, you might get frazzled!" will not always work. Some will still have an unstoppable urge to risk touching it (to see what happens) while the academically less gifted might not even be able to read what the sign says!
And then of course there is the matter of private property and public walkways on the other side of the fence. People out walking with their dogs do not want Rover coming back .... well totally frazzled! So the problem is how to keep the fence out of reach from outside.
Leaving this excellent question unanswered (someone has already answered it somewhere - there are plenty of electronic fences in use for security elsewhere), I will move on to the now single main entrance, metal detectors, our wonderful ever-alert security guard (sorry, excuse me while I wake him up again - the problem with appointing retirees is that they need more sleep. The head of the NRA suggested retirees incidentally - not my proposal).
You then have the rather interesting point of how you get all the children into the school through the one entrance. In my teaching years this would have meant getting approximately 1,300 kids (between the ages of 11 and 18) into the school. They would tend to arrive in a 30 minute period between 0820 and 0850. Divide 1,300 by 30 you get 43.3 recurring per minute. And who are all now obliged to pass through the metal detectors.
Ask people at airports if this can be done (expect hilarious laughter or a look of shock). Ask people at airports what sort of items set off the alarm on metal detectors. Which is why mobile 'phones need to go with your hand luggage through a special device. I don't know about the US or the UK or Germany, but in Scandinavia a recent survey indicated that some 85-90% of kids would expect to have a mobile 'phone with them during the day (parents also appreciate the possibility of having their kids contactable by such, even if the kids use them more for social purposes).
Metal detectors sounding alarms every few seconds, 1 child passing through them every one and a half seconds, and an old security guard on his own trying to deal with this.
And then imagine the situation when a 15-year-old girl sets this off, she cannot understand why it has gone off, and the old (male!) guard decides that he has to search her? After all she could be hiding a handgun in her underwear ....
Suddenly you need a female security guard, right?
Given all the factors involved, the original proposal as stands can never work. Simply put.
The number of guards necessary (and the number of access points) has to increase, the processing has to be far more efficient, the time factor has to be more realistic, and the personnel have to be trained professionals and quick enough to react if there is an emergency. How quickly would even a retired policeman react when faced by a fit young man armed with an automatic rifle. The chances are that he would be dead before he had time to even think. The first of many if these school killings are anything to go by.
And did I mention the cost involved?
Providing PROPER security to all schools if you want armed guards and the like in a country the size of the United States is going to be, like it or not, very expensive! And at a time when the politicians are involved in a noisy debate about cutting public expenditure, reducing the deficit usw, adding massively to the cost of school security will only means an increase in education costs which have to be taken from elsewhere.
That is the financial logic of the argument.
But the security of the kids is paramount?
Of course it is.
There have to be ways to keep guns out of schools there and everywhere else in the world for that matter (there have been two instances of these atrocities with guns in schools in Germany since the start of the 21st century - in Erfurt in 2002 and in Winnenden near Stuttgart in 2009). But the solutions have to be clear and well thought out, not a series of sound bytes full of obvious logical flaws through which even someone like myself, who is no expert on security, can drive the proverbial coach and horses.
Anyway your heart goes out to the parents of the young children brutally slain in Connecticut. Words fail me as to what would drive anyone to kill children like that. Some things in this often brutal world are beyond comprehension.
One suggestion that has arisen about preventing a repeat of this comes from the NRA in the US. NRA (explained principally for the benefit of foreigners who do not know this fact) stands for National Rifle Association (the "N" does not stand for "Nutty" or "Nauseating" incidentally), and they are strong advocates for the Second Amendment rights in the US constitution which is all to do with the right to bear arsenals - sorry "arms"!
Their suggestion involves essentially putting armed guards in front of every school in the US. Ignoring comments that I have read from seditious American "Leftists" in the past few days that on the day of the notorious Columbine High School massacre back in 1999 that the school in question did have armed guards "protecting" the place (so the suggestion will not necessarily work ....) - and after all denying the constitutional rights of the likes of Adam Lanza to bear arms would obviously have been a mistake - I will look at school security in the light of my experiences as a teacher in England back in the 1970s.
I have extremely good memory powers, and unfortunately I can still remember much about the school where I spent most of my teaching career in the late 70s - "unfortunately" as the nightmares often still come back.
To bear in mind - no two schools are structured or administered the same way.
This particular school had been amalgamated from two separate schools on the same site in a fit of passionate Socialist idealism which regarded pragmatism as an unfortunate obstacle that gets in the way of clear idealistic thinking and planning (why they do not apply the thinking when it comes to bankers wrecking economies usw, I never do get - education seems fine for idealism, politicos tend to lose this idealism when it comes to taxation & regulations usw for some strange reason).
Logistically it was summat of a nightmare. There were two sets of buildings. To the front of one set was a main road. Go 500 metres and turn left, go down another not insignificant road for about 200 metres, you came to the other set of buildings. Surrounding the buildings on the other sides were the fairly extensive sports fields - football (North American = soccer) pitches for the boys, hockey (North American = field hockey) pitches for the girls, in summer (no jokes here about the summer in England incidentally - in 1975 and 1976 there were real summers!) these could be converted into athletic tracks or cricket pitches.
At one end the school was definitely fenced off from the private property and public walkways to be found there. I imagine that it was also the case at the other end (I never went to find out), but as a lot of kids used to walk home that way at the end of the school day, I imagine that any fence was not too effective at providing 100% security.
There were meanwhile at least five entrances from the roads to the school and a parking bay where school buses dropped off kids who were brought in daily from the surrounding villages. This bay was conveniently situated next to the school, so there was no requirement to go to any main entrance from there.
With me so far?
Your challenge at this point is to turn this establishment, at least as it then stood, into a secure property which security guards can protect.
Fence off the outside, close all the entrances except one, put in metal detectors ..... Fine, that quick and easy, eh? Think of airports, restrict areas of movement from the outside and you are there?
Give me that as an answer and you get sent home with extra homework!
Right to start with - the fence. This has to be secure. Vandal-proof. Might I suggest electronic fencing. Electronic fencing will keep villains out, right? Not voting against electronic fencing personally, but remember that what serves to keep villains out (getting frazzled as they try to break in) also impacts other less villainous individuals.
This is a school, remember. Some kids are curious to the point of being utterly stupid. And sticking up a very large sign saying "do not touch the fence, you might get frazzled!" will not always work. Some will still have an unstoppable urge to risk touching it (to see what happens) while the academically less gifted might not even be able to read what the sign says!
And then of course there is the matter of private property and public walkways on the other side of the fence. People out walking with their dogs do not want Rover coming back .... well totally frazzled! So the problem is how to keep the fence out of reach from outside.
Leaving this excellent question unanswered (someone has already answered it somewhere - there are plenty of electronic fences in use for security elsewhere), I will move on to the now single main entrance, metal detectors, our wonderful ever-alert security guard (sorry, excuse me while I wake him up again - the problem with appointing retirees is that they need more sleep. The head of the NRA suggested retirees incidentally - not my proposal).
You then have the rather interesting point of how you get all the children into the school through the one entrance. In my teaching years this would have meant getting approximately 1,300 kids (between the ages of 11 and 18) into the school. They would tend to arrive in a 30 minute period between 0820 and 0850. Divide 1,300 by 30 you get 43.3 recurring per minute. And who are all now obliged to pass through the metal detectors.
Ask people at airports if this can be done (expect hilarious laughter or a look of shock). Ask people at airports what sort of items set off the alarm on metal detectors. Which is why mobile 'phones need to go with your hand luggage through a special device. I don't know about the US or the UK or Germany, but in Scandinavia a recent survey indicated that some 85-90% of kids would expect to have a mobile 'phone with them during the day (parents also appreciate the possibility of having their kids contactable by such, even if the kids use them more for social purposes).
Metal detectors sounding alarms every few seconds, 1 child passing through them every one and a half seconds, and an old security guard on his own trying to deal with this.
And then imagine the situation when a 15-year-old girl sets this off, she cannot understand why it has gone off, and the old (male!) guard decides that he has to search her? After all she could be hiding a handgun in her underwear ....
Suddenly you need a female security guard, right?
Given all the factors involved, the original proposal as stands can never work. Simply put.
The number of guards necessary (and the number of access points) has to increase, the processing has to be far more efficient, the time factor has to be more realistic, and the personnel have to be trained professionals and quick enough to react if there is an emergency. How quickly would even a retired policeman react when faced by a fit young man armed with an automatic rifle. The chances are that he would be dead before he had time to even think. The first of many if these school killings are anything to go by.
And did I mention the cost involved?
Providing PROPER security to all schools if you want armed guards and the like in a country the size of the United States is going to be, like it or not, very expensive! And at a time when the politicians are involved in a noisy debate about cutting public expenditure, reducing the deficit usw, adding massively to the cost of school security will only means an increase in education costs which have to be taken from elsewhere.
That is the financial logic of the argument.
But the security of the kids is paramount?
Of course it is.
There have to be ways to keep guns out of schools there and everywhere else in the world for that matter (there have been two instances of these atrocities with guns in schools in Germany since the start of the 21st century - in Erfurt in 2002 and in Winnenden near Stuttgart in 2009). But the solutions have to be clear and well thought out, not a series of sound bytes full of obvious logical flaws through which even someone like myself, who is no expert on security, can drive the proverbial coach and horses.
Thursday, 20 December 2012
End of the world tomorrow?
Well I hate to disappoint you, folks, but the world is not going to end tomorrow.
There is no more reason to believe that than there is to believe the two predictions of such that we had in 2011, and numerous others before that (check out Mother Shipton of Knaresborough in Yorkshire some time).
No need to waste money on the event. No need to panic. No need even to take precautions.
The day after - we will all be here as normal (except those would have died on that day anyway, and they will not know anything about anything any more!).
The prediction may instead mean merely the end of the era as we know it, and a new dawn in our existence usw. Excuse me while I fall on the floor laughing at the thought, gurgling the words "the age of Aquarius" as I do so! The age of Aquarius didn't happen, this won't either.
Better times are coming? We can but hope. But it will require the application of human intelligence, not some silly prophesy wharrever its origins!
There is no more reason to believe that than there is to believe the two predictions of such that we had in 2011, and numerous others before that (check out Mother Shipton of Knaresborough in Yorkshire some time).
No need to waste money on the event. No need to panic. No need even to take precautions.
The day after - we will all be here as normal (except those would have died on that day anyway, and they will not know anything about anything any more!).
The prediction may instead mean merely the end of the era as we know it, and a new dawn in our existence usw. Excuse me while I fall on the floor laughing at the thought, gurgling the words "the age of Aquarius" as I do so! The age of Aquarius didn't happen, this won't either.
Better times are coming? We can but hope. But it will require the application of human intelligence, not some silly prophesy wharrever its origins!
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
How do you force people to enjoy themselves?
Yep it is Christmas coming up again.
Same old boring movies on television - including stuff appearing after the cut-off time (longstanding opinion - movies that are only fit for children should not be shown after 1800).
Same old dirges on the radio with awful sentimental lyrics that you would never hear again if they didn't have the word "Christmas" in them every second line.
Same old commercialisation trying to get people to buy things that they cannot afford and would probably never purchase under other circumstances in the proverbial month of Sundays.
Same old thinking that you have to be as miserable as this economy makes you, but for some strange reason on December 25th you have to be cheerful.
And the same attempts to make the event religiously significant (despite the above) to an audience in Europe that is ever more sceptical. In 30 years time, the way things are heading, atheists in many European countries will outnumber Christians by a massive margin, so the significance of Christmas will change per se, although whether there will be a change in outlook by commercial interests remains to be seen.
And yes I know that it used to be a pagan festival (to celebrate the winter solstice) that the Christians stole.
As I am neither a Christian, nor a pagan (and winter is for me the least desirable of the seasons) ....
So why not try to be happy every day? And generous and .... Why not celebrate on August 4th, December 12th, March 3rd (for people with birthdays on those dates of course, you might anyway, but I think that you get the point)?
Meanwhile turn up for one of those typical family get-togethers where you have to eat too much, far too much alcohol is consumed and someone gets not merely drunk but chronically verbally abusive ....
Then and there someone will then tell you in an imperative voice "Enjoy yourself, it's Christmas!!!!".
A bit like the Christmas turkey (or chicken or goose or duck) is supposed to enjoy itself, I suppose.
Enjoyment, my friends, arises from within. It cannot be forced from the outside. It is very difficult to force someone to enjoy themselves (and bad excuses like "well it's Christmas" definitely do not work). Maybe masochists can be forced to enjoy an event if you know where to hit them and how, but for most everyone else it is as ridiculous a thought as it gets.
In fact most Christmas celebrations are, in my experience, held with many people that you would choose to avoid most of the time. Enjoyment in those circumstances is definitely not part of the argument!
A waste of time and effort in other words.
Now let us get back to the point which I made earlier about being able to enjoy life all the time and not (stupidly) on one day a year.
For that we need a working, prosperous economy, interesting worthwhile jobs that reward people who want to work, an affordable lifestyle and a degree of control over our own lives rather than having it run - and ruined - for us by a few idiot gamblers who are part of the corporatocracy. 365 days a year (366 in leap years). The chances of that though are about as likely as getting through to December 28th without any more nonsense!
Same old boring movies on television - including stuff appearing after the cut-off time (longstanding opinion - movies that are only fit for children should not be shown after 1800).
Same old dirges on the radio with awful sentimental lyrics that you would never hear again if they didn't have the word "Christmas" in them every second line.
Same old commercialisation trying to get people to buy things that they cannot afford and would probably never purchase under other circumstances in the proverbial month of Sundays.
Same old thinking that you have to be as miserable as this economy makes you, but for some strange reason on December 25th you have to be cheerful.
And the same attempts to make the event religiously significant (despite the above) to an audience in Europe that is ever more sceptical. In 30 years time, the way things are heading, atheists in many European countries will outnumber Christians by a massive margin, so the significance of Christmas will change per se, although whether there will be a change in outlook by commercial interests remains to be seen.
And yes I know that it used to be a pagan festival (to celebrate the winter solstice) that the Christians stole.
As I am neither a Christian, nor a pagan (and winter is for me the least desirable of the seasons) ....
So why not try to be happy every day? And generous and .... Why not celebrate on August 4th, December 12th, March 3rd (for people with birthdays on those dates of course, you might anyway, but I think that you get the point)?
Meanwhile turn up for one of those typical family get-togethers where you have to eat too much, far too much alcohol is consumed and someone gets not merely drunk but chronically verbally abusive ....
Then and there someone will then tell you in an imperative voice "Enjoy yourself, it's Christmas!!!!".
A bit like the Christmas turkey (or chicken or goose or duck) is supposed to enjoy itself, I suppose.
Enjoyment, my friends, arises from within. It cannot be forced from the outside. It is very difficult to force someone to enjoy themselves (and bad excuses like "well it's Christmas" definitely do not work). Maybe masochists can be forced to enjoy an event if you know where to hit them and how, but for most everyone else it is as ridiculous a thought as it gets.
In fact most Christmas celebrations are, in my experience, held with many people that you would choose to avoid most of the time. Enjoyment in those circumstances is definitely not part of the argument!
A waste of time and effort in other words.
Now let us get back to the point which I made earlier about being able to enjoy life all the time and not (stupidly) on one day a year.
For that we need a working, prosperous economy, interesting worthwhile jobs that reward people who want to work, an affordable lifestyle and a degree of control over our own lives rather than having it run - and ruined - for us by a few idiot gamblers who are part of the corporatocracy. 365 days a year (366 in leap years). The chances of that though are about as likely as getting through to December 28th without any more nonsense!
Friday, 14 December 2012
Sixteen
Go back to the halcyon days of Rock 'n' Roll in the 1950s and the early 1960s. Dig out the many songs which seem fixated upon 16-year-old girls. The Crests "Sixteen Candles" (still even now a favourite song of mine - for the vocalisation at least), Chuck Berry "Sweet Little Sixteen", Johnny Burnette "You're Sixteen" - there are dozens more. Sexual implication (naughty), but nothing too direct. What was it with Rock and girls of that age?
No answer. Move on.
Between 1973 and 1979 I used to teach a lot of 16-year-olds. Mainly the intelligent ones. Neither children (I also used to teach 11-year-olds, they definitely were children), definitely not adults (walk into the staff room and check out my female colleagues - they definitely were adults). Difficult age to define really. Nothing to risk getting involved with.
Move on again.
According to stats in the UK approximately one third of kids of that age now are sexually active, in Germany it is about a quarter. Whether the stats can be trusted is a good question, but 16 is the age of consent, so in theory nothing illegal is going on, even if common-sense should encourage them to wait a bit. (I noted a few weeks ago that there are European countries where the age of consent is lower than that - see Austria and the Czech Republic for example - but there are strings attached to prevent predators taking advantage).
OK combine 1979 (see above), 16-year-old girls (see above), sexual activity (see above), age of consent (see above) and try what was happening in Denmark in 1979.
Copenhagen was at that time (times change) one of the centres of the production of pornographic movies in Europe. The age of consent being 16 (I am told), a girl could appear in such a movie when she reached that age apparently (any readers in Denmark please correct me on that if I am wrong but this was stated by one of the leading makers of such movies who had no scruples about using such girls).
1979, a 16-year-old girl makes an adult movie, a couple of years later it is almost forgotten, the world moves on.
You would imagine.
The number of adult movies being made around the world and intended to satisfy the seemingly endless demand on the Internet dwarfs the number made in the 1970s. So would anyone want these antique pieces of short not exactly classic movies. Times have moved on, the minimum age is theoretically 18 (cough, splutter) but apart from that what would be the attraction? There are certain things from 1979 we could do with now (the standard of living, the relatively low unemployment rate, enforced discipline in some schools at least - even if the one I taught in failed in that respect), but tacky bits of porn?
Well the Internet is with us and apparently .....
I was reading last night how the American authorities got themselves into a confused state in 2007 (does that surprise me????). They were trying to stop the publication (not sure whether it was a DVD or on the Internet) of a few of these ancient Danish porn films based upon the fact that the girls were underage ("Child Porn" etc).
I personally wouldn't regard films involving 16-year-olds as being "Child Porn". It probably ought to be called "Adolescent Porn" or summat. "Child Porn" sounds like one of these horror stories involving 5-year-olds.
The rules these days say "18" so that ought to be enforced (protecting the individuals younger than that from being exploited maybe - though if the girl were 17 years and 364 days old is a day gonna make much difference?). But ancient stuff from 1979 in a country where such films could be made legally?
It is not as if you are trying to protect anyone from anything really. Go off to Denmark and ask the people involved (if they are still there and still alive). Problem being they would be well into their 40s now. So do they need protecting from their pasts? Maybe they would be so embarrassed they would like them withdrawn. And then it may bring back fond memories. And then it may be so long ago they do not care one way or the other.
There is a need out there to protect kids from predators. That involves us looking at the situation now and finding how we can effectively do it (see the child brothels in Cambodia for example), not wrapping ourselves in concern about some tacky 33-year-old movies. That is a world away, any damage has long since been done, and public money could be spent far more usefully pursuing existing problems.
No answer. Move on.
Between 1973 and 1979 I used to teach a lot of 16-year-olds. Mainly the intelligent ones. Neither children (I also used to teach 11-year-olds, they definitely were children), definitely not adults (walk into the staff room and check out my female colleagues - they definitely were adults). Difficult age to define really. Nothing to risk getting involved with.
Move on again.
According to stats in the UK approximately one third of kids of that age now are sexually active, in Germany it is about a quarter. Whether the stats can be trusted is a good question, but 16 is the age of consent, so in theory nothing illegal is going on, even if common-sense should encourage them to wait a bit. (I noted a few weeks ago that there are European countries where the age of consent is lower than that - see Austria and the Czech Republic for example - but there are strings attached to prevent predators taking advantage).
OK combine 1979 (see above), 16-year-old girls (see above), sexual activity (see above), age of consent (see above) and try what was happening in Denmark in 1979.
Copenhagen was at that time (times change) one of the centres of the production of pornographic movies in Europe. The age of consent being 16 (I am told), a girl could appear in such a movie when she reached that age apparently (any readers in Denmark please correct me on that if I am wrong but this was stated by one of the leading makers of such movies who had no scruples about using such girls).
1979, a 16-year-old girl makes an adult movie, a couple of years later it is almost forgotten, the world moves on.
You would imagine.
The number of adult movies being made around the world and intended to satisfy the seemingly endless demand on the Internet dwarfs the number made in the 1970s. So would anyone want these antique pieces of short not exactly classic movies. Times have moved on, the minimum age is theoretically 18 (cough, splutter) but apart from that what would be the attraction? There are certain things from 1979 we could do with now (the standard of living, the relatively low unemployment rate, enforced discipline in some schools at least - even if the one I taught in failed in that respect), but tacky bits of porn?
Well the Internet is with us and apparently .....
I was reading last night how the American authorities got themselves into a confused state in 2007 (does that surprise me????). They were trying to stop the publication (not sure whether it was a DVD or on the Internet) of a few of these ancient Danish porn films based upon the fact that the girls were underage ("Child Porn" etc).
I personally wouldn't regard films involving 16-year-olds as being "Child Porn". It probably ought to be called "Adolescent Porn" or summat. "Child Porn" sounds like one of these horror stories involving 5-year-olds.
The rules these days say "18" so that ought to be enforced (protecting the individuals younger than that from being exploited maybe - though if the girl were 17 years and 364 days old is a day gonna make much difference?). But ancient stuff from 1979 in a country where such films could be made legally?
It is not as if you are trying to protect anyone from anything really. Go off to Denmark and ask the people involved (if they are still there and still alive). Problem being they would be well into their 40s now. So do they need protecting from their pasts? Maybe they would be so embarrassed they would like them withdrawn. And then it may bring back fond memories. And then it may be so long ago they do not care one way or the other.
There is a need out there to protect kids from predators. That involves us looking at the situation now and finding how we can effectively do it (see the child brothels in Cambodia for example), not wrapping ourselves in concern about some tacky 33-year-old movies. That is a world away, any damage has long since been done, and public money could be spent far more usefully pursuing existing problems.
Sunday, 9 December 2012
With age comes wisdom
Once in a while on YouTube you find a real classic video.
If you want a view on what has gone right and wrong with the world since 1945, where the UN has got it right and got it wrong in the past 60+ years, where the EU has got it right and wrong in the past 50 odd years usw, this is worth hearing.
He is 96 years old, and the intelligence, the insight into and grasp of what has been happening for the past few decades is astounding. I found myself agreeing with nearly everything he had to say, particularly his comments on nationalism in Europe.
One down side, dear reader, you had better speak French (or find some way to make YouTube produce English subtitles!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFi0aG08ydY&feature=g-crec-lik
If you want a view on what has gone right and wrong with the world since 1945, where the UN has got it right and got it wrong in the past 60+ years, where the EU has got it right and wrong in the past 50 odd years usw, this is worth hearing.
He is 96 years old, and the intelligence, the insight into and grasp of what has been happening for the past few decades is astounding. I found myself agreeing with nearly everything he had to say, particularly his comments on nationalism in Europe.
One down side, dear reader, you had better speak French (or find some way to make YouTube produce English subtitles!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFi0aG08ydY&feature=g-crec-lik
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