Charitable giving

First of all, if you read my blog, please leave a comment or e-mail
me to let me know. Pretty please. With sugar on top.

Just to get you started, here is a rather extreme posting.

Secondly, a response to this feedback column from the Guardian:

http://money.guardian.co.uk/personal/story/0,13970,1655451,00.html

Is giving charitable gifts at Christmas selfish?

Well, oddly enough, I say no.

It seems to me that the desire to call charity selfish and the
suggestion that someone may be offending by receiving a charitable
gift is nothing more than an indication of how deep into the
self-obsessed consumerist mire we have sunk.

If someone is ungrateful and selfish enough (i.e. feeling put out
that they haven't received something for themselves) to be resentful
at not being given a tub of cookies then you have to ask yourself,
why am I buying something for them at all? Are they really going to
be happy at getting bath soaps? Isn't rather hypocritical of me to
buy them a thoughtless, predictable gift? Isn't it just a waste when
they don't care and I don't really care either?

Gifts should be an indication of how much we care about somebody and
should reflect our desire to see those people happy. Grabbing three
tins of chocolates in Sainsbury's doesn't seem a particularly good
way of showing this.

Here would be my ordered preferences for gift buying:

A personal, seriously considered gift (which may include a charitable
gift).
A charitable gift for someone that would appreciate the significance
(if you really can't think of something else).
Nothing at all.
A charitable gift for someone who couldn't care less.
The usual, ill though out, reaction present because you feel you
should do.

Amongst the comments in the article was the suggestion that giving
charitable gifts was merely a way to assuage guilt at not doing
enough for charity. This begs the question of whether normal
charitable giving is also guilt reduction. I would probably say yes
to that (which we can come to another day), but my point is really
that it all seems a handy excuse for people to refuse to give to
Charity, or in other words further exhibit their own selfish Mammon
worshipping tendencies.

A large proportion of gift buying charitable or otherwise, be it
Christmas or birthday seems to be nothing more than a way to reduce
guilt at not being a good enough friend anyway combined with the
marketed pressure that it is Christmas, I have to buy everybody lots
of things otherwise I will look poor.

So, to sum up. Think about what you are doing and be honest about it.

Jealousy Test

A bit weird this one, bear with me and don't claim that I never told
you about how odd some of my thought processes are.

So, have you ever wondered if you really do love that person? Do you
think it may just be a passing fancy? Carry out this thought
experiment to see just how much you enthralled.

Imagine that the object of your desire has just walked into the room
hanging off of the arm of another. Or for the ultimate test, imagine
that you have just been invited to their wedding. Really think about
it and try and convince yourself that it actually happened. How are
you feeling right now on a scale of one to ten?

1. Wahoo, a wedding to go to and a chance to snog the
bridesmaids/best man.
2. Hm, how vexing, maybe I won't bother to buy new shoes for the big
day.
3. Grr, turn up looking scruffy and scowling at the back, biting
peoples' heads off.
4. Weep uncontrollably and plot far fetched plans of revenge.
5. Congratulate your usurper and warn them to look after your loved
one.
6. Trip your victorious opponent up as they walk down the aisle.
7. Send the lads around the night before the wedding to apply some
makeup.
8. Accidentally cut the brake cables of the wedding car before it
drives off into the sunset.
9. Turn up at the wedding with chainsaw in one hand and flaming
brand in the other.
10. Dust off the nuclear missile you keep in the loft.

Getting better

I have conceived (another) plan in my eternal quest to pull my socks
up. I shall concentrate on doing small things regularly and
hopefully this will improve my chances of being able to tackle big
things further down the line. So, each will I shall attempt to:

i. Do some work on my website.
ii. Upload at least six photos onto Flickr.
iii. Write at least one letter or piece of comment or article.

So far this week I have done i (reactivated comments on my blog and
started adding stat collection) and ii (from the NASMA conference).
Ideas for iii welcome.

School stabbings

For those of you in Britain (which, if I count the number of readers
of this blog amounts to all three of you), you may have recently
heard in the news of a spate of stabbings and attacks in schools.

This article about one of the recent ones caught my eye:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/pupilbehaviour/story/0,16806,1642728,00.html

From the article: "[the victim's] mother... is worried that her
daughter will have to face her attacker. "I don't want Danielle to
miss lessons but the girl should be off for longer," she said.
"Otherwise it is telling the child if you beat someone up you can
have a week off school. She's back there now like she's done nothing
at all."

It struck me how obvious that statement was. In a lot of cases of
severe disciplinary problems you have children who are disaffected
with school. So you punish them by telling them to stay at home for
a week.

Now I am not saying that suspensions and exclusions encourage bad
behaviour from children who don't want to be there, but it hardly
seems a particularly disincentive to misbehave does it?

Further to that, I don't think that it is entirely productive to deal
with misbehaving pupils by isolating them from the school
environment. I think the aim should be less punitive and more
reforming and it seems better to me to be doing that in a school or
school-like environment. Another article in the Guardian highlighted
the work of some special units for disruptive children which had
great benefits for all. But surprise surprise they are drastically
underfunded and anyway, who can be bothered to go to that effort when
it is so much easier to sign a piece of paper and kick the kid off
school property for week.

First Count

I have now typed up my first writings (still no network at work) and
they come to a grand 1,159. I shall stick the mon t'internet when
the network is back.