We've won! Well sort of....

The Council today officially dropped plans to amalgamate Kingsley St. John's Primary School with Norley C.E Primary School in favour of Federation (see the Save Our School site for further details).

This means that neither school will be closed, which is great news.

However, I can't help thinking that this is exactly what the Council planned all along and the suggestion of closures was brought up so that we would take this option as the lesser of the two evils - if they'd bought up Federation as the original suggestion there would have been just as much of an uproar!

Time will tell of course, and I really hope that this is really it, but the damage done to the two schools by people pulling their children out because of the fear of future changes and possible closures might just play right into the Councils hands....

Oh well we know how to fight now, so just let them try! :)

Best Shape Of Your Life site launched

Further to my posts about Don Lemmon and is Know How programme I have launched my own affiliate site to try and spread the word in the UK.

I've got hold of a few copies of Don's Book 1: The Truth about Exercise and Nutrition, which can be purchased from the site.

The site is http://www.bestshapeofyourlife.co.uk

Save Kingsley St.John's - Site now live

The Save Kingsley St. John's web site is now live at http://www.kingsleyvillage.co.uk/sos/
(along with an unhappy looking Christopher and Zoe in the front picture :)

Save our school - part II

As part of the Save Our School campaign we are writing letters to the Powers That Be and I got a bit carried away. Tamsyn won't let me send the following - can't think why....

Dear Sir/Madam,
Both my children are pupils at Kingsley St Johns Primary School and I have been shocked to hear of the possible merger with Norley CE Primary School due to funding being plundered from local authorities by a corrupt government to pay for a war we don’t want in a country we don’t care about.

Kingsley may be a small rural village in Cheshire but the school is the centre of the community and provides excellent education for our children as well as extra curricular activities.

The proposal to merge Kingsley and Norley, resulting in the closure of one of the schools means that the children from the school that gets closed will have to travel further meaning we all have to use our cars and burn more fossil fuel because of the distance and unsafe road – there is no pavement for a good deal of the way either, though I don’t suppose that really matters; After all if we lose a few children to traffic accidents on the way then that’s even more money that can be diverted to our glorious cause in Iraq.

And what about those children with parents who do not own a car?

There is little public transport available, and none between the two villages, so how are these children expected to get to school? Young primary school children are far too young to be put on any school bus so the use of a car will become mandatory.

Some of the problems this merger will cause are:
• Larger classes will result in the children getting less of the attention they need to progress,
• The loss of a successful and caring school with a broad and balanced curriculum
• As mentioned above road traffic, pollution and parking difficulties will increase.
• Once a school has been closed and the land used for building (more houses no doubt) there is little chance it will ever be re-opened in the future. Plus, new houses will probably mean more future pupils!

Needless to say I've written another and sent it out :)

Please help save our school!

If there is anybody out there who has been through a similar situation as this then I would appreciate some advice on what we can do to stop it.

The UK government has decided that small schools in Cheshire, UK are to be amalgamated to cut costs (to help fund invading some other country that is nothing to do with us no doubt) and my childrens school (Kingsley St Johns Primary School) is one of those. We are a small rural village in Cheshire and the school is the centre of the community providing excellent education for our children as well as extra curriclar activities.

The proposal is to merge Kingsley and Norley resulting in the closure of one of the schools. This means that the children from the school that gets closed will have to travel further to school making walking impossible So now we all have to use our cars and burn more fossil fuel because of the distance and unsafe road - no pavement for a good chunk of the way.

And what about those children who's parents do not own a car?

There is little public transport available, and none between the two villages, so how are these children expected to get to school? Young primary school children are far too young to be put on any school bus so the use of a car will become mandatory.

Some of the problems this merger will cause are:

Larger classes will result in the children getting less of the attention they need to progress,
The loss of a successful and caring school with a broad and balanced curriculum
As mentioned above road traffic, pollution and parking difficulties will increase.
Once a school has been closed and the land used for building (more houses no doubt) there is little chance it will ever be re-opened in the future. Plus, new houses will probably mean more future pupils!
I could rant a little more because I really am woried about the future education of my children and I really do not understand this government. On the one hand they are telling us that children are failing to learn to read and write properley and to sort this out they decide to close a number of schools that are successfully addressing this issue!

Anyway, enough ranting. If anybody anywhere has successfully fought a similar situation then please could you contact me (leave comments here) so that we can try some of the things you did.

Thank you.

Know How progress

After my previous blog about losing weight a few people have become interested in Don Lemmon's Know How so I thought I would post the following links of people who have also done the programme. I know of these people from Don's board http://www.liesandpropaganda.com so I know they're genuine. Plus, the before and after photo's really do speak for themselves....
http://www.fitnessnotfatness.com
http://www.extremecanadianfitness.com/
http://www.bestshapeofyourlife.com/

So, if you want to check it all out click the banner below and go visit Don's site.

Zoe's first day of school

Today Zoe started "big school" and pictures of her and Christopher can be found at http://www.sherlock.co.uk/family.html
Tamsyn managed not to cry and I managed not to contain my glee at having a whole day's peace and quiet - we even managed a meal at a local pub. Bliss.
Any hope that Zoe would be tired after her first full day have been scuppered and she has even demanded that she do some home work!

The page also includes pictures of the riding lesson Christopher had last week as well as a few messing around pictures in the garden.

Eating right, getting fit and losing weight

Last Christmas I weighed 12 stone and was as unfit as I can ever remember being. I almost couldn't get into the gym at work because my blood pressure was right on the edge of being too high. Anyway reaching the edge of your clothes is all very well if you can afford new ones but being from the North of England and, I quote a friend I worked with in London, "a typical northern tight-arse" I decided something needed doing if my wallet was going to survive a future shopping trip.

I've never had to diet before but knew enough to know that killing yourself on the Atkins diet, or starving yourself on the Cabbage soup diet were daft so I bought the "You Are What You Eat Cookbook" by Gillian McKeith and changed what I ate.

I also stumbled across Don Lemmon on the Internet and found his mix of eating right and exercise more my thing. So I ordered his Book 1 (available from his web site below - stick with the page as there's a lot of info and if you read it all it does make sense). It's a really interesting read and teaches you a whole lot more about food - He basically splits food into 12 groups and teaches you how to combine certain foods and eat others separately. It's more of a life-style change and unlike other fad-diets you don't stop eating carbohydraytes or live on salad, but eat good food, more often. And to top it all he's a real nice guy who answers your emails and encourages discussion at his board http://www.liesandpropaganda.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2

And what's great is Gillian McKeith agrees with some of what he says so you're never stuck for a recipe - I've learnt some great new dishes and now do all our cooking rather than just most of it :)

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I lost a stone and a half, dropped a couple of inches off my waist, got fit and look better than I did when I was 21 (I can even see my abs - at 36!). And I'm never hungry because the Know-How diet encourages you to eat.

It's great and it works. What are you waiting for?

ViSOR - at last!

I am proud to say I helped design and code bits of ViSOR (along with quite a few others who I shared a hard working, often drunken time in London with). It has been live a while and answers a lot of the Bichard enquiry points about Police forces not previously sharing information on nasty people, and yet has never been recognised in the press, or by the Home Office - something I've found very frustrating as it works well, has addressed a lot infrastructure problems within police forces, and is liked as a system by the people who actually use it. Try getting them to say anything nice about the pre-historice Police National Computer (PNC) and you'll she why we are so proud of ViSOR.

Anyway, recognition of a superb system at last:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4163764.stm

Holiday Pictures

The last few days in Cornwall were great with lovely weather and nice days out. The journey home was also a relief as it took 4.5 hours less than the journey down and we were home for 14:30.
The Family pages (http://www.sherlock.co.uk/pictures/July2005/) have been updated with some of the holiday pictures (email me if you need the username or password)

Cornwall - Days 2 and 3

At last the weather has improved and we're having some great days.
Cornwall is surprisingly dog friendly and we've found a few beaches that we can take Molly to, and they're actually nice sandy beaches as well (you usually need to don mountain climbing gear to safely negotiate the rocks on a beach that allows dogs).
So, we've had an enjoyable day emptying rock pools and today we went to The Lost Gardens Of Heligan. What an amazing place! It is a large family estate that slowly fell into disrepair after most of the staff died in World War 1. In 1991 work started on renovation and it is now pretty much as it was, which is very impressive indeed. Rather than waffle forever it's easier to point you toward http://www.heligan.com/
And when we got back to the 'cottage' they had even cut the grass! The hidden downside to that is we are now in danger of decapitation from low flying frisbees and Christopher's latest sport of Rugby. It doesn't really bother me, except maybe when he knocks my beer over...

Holiday in Cornwall - day 1

Well here we are on holiday in Cornwall. The journey down was a complete nightmare, what with the atrocious British weather and some bus drivers inability to stop his bus from bursting into flames. It all helped turn an already daunting 5 hour journey into a delightful 8. Thank god for sat nav, or I would never have found this place!
We are staying in a holiday cottage in North Tamerton, which is lovely. However, <bile blog mode>If you're charging 900 beer tokens a week for a cottage then at least:
1. Air the place - it stank like it hasn't been lived in since last year.
2. Mow the grass - how are we supposed to spot the dog shit in foot long grass?
3. Make sure the place is secure - sliding doors that cannot be locked are not secure!
4. If the nearest shop is 7 miles away then at least make some soap, washing up liquid and toilet paper available until we get chance to shop.
5. The place has 4 bedrooms (and there are currently 8 people here) so how come the fridge is only big enough for 2 people who don't intend to eat much? </bile blog mode>
On the upside, there may not be a shop on site but there is a pub! We'll be checking that out fairly soon :)
There's also loads of nature - we've spotted a deer, fox, numerous birds and a pig(!) all in the first morning.
But hey I'm on holiday so I'm going to try and put my Victor Meldew persona to one side and enjoy myself...

Getting 'unchecked' value from Struts checkbox

The following was posted last year on a different blog. I'm consolidating posts here and you never know when this info may come in handy :)

Having just spent half the afternoon trying to get a page with a checkbox to work correctly with Struts I stumbled across the following. I knew that an unchecked value was never returned in the form and, as we are using Struts DynaActionForms, was starting to think about over-riding the Form when I came across a solution that is so simple it's embarrassing.

The solution is to add a hidden field immediately after the checkbox field i.e.

<html:checkbox property="currentLocation" value="true"/>
<html:hidden property="currentLocation" value="false"/>

When the form is submitted if the checkbox is selected the hidden field is ignored, but if the checkbox is empty it isn't in the form so the hidden field is used.
Works a treat.

Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town

Cory Doctorow's new book 'Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town' is now available as a free download from his website http://www.craphound.com.

I converted it to Microsoft EReader (.lit) format and he has made it available on his page. However, a few people have complained that the file is corrupt and the font isn't great (it's horrible!) so I have re-done it using the Verdana font and corrected the text from his errata page.

I've emailed it to Cory so hopefully it will appear on his page soon, but in the mean time you can download it from here.