After just three weeks of relatively minor inconvenience our loft conversion is almost complete, and it has exceeded all expectations.

The estimated 10′ by 12′ space has become a 13′ by 17′ reality - with the added bonuses of a walk-in wardrobe for Darling Wifey and an en-suite bathroom. And it is in the en-suite that we find the problem.

There is room for a shower cubicle, a basin and a loo. But there is not enough room to open the Daily Telegraph whilst utilising the facilities.

First we lost our Empire, and now this.

How do you explain the difference between pirates and cowboys to a pirate-obsessed four year old?

Tiny Flirt has just arrived home from a cowboy party dressed in a checked shirt, waistcoat, chaps, neckerchief and sherriff’s star. All through the party he charged around shouting ‘Yee-ha, me hearties!‘ and making all the cattle rustlers walk the plank.

I’ve just read this letter on the BBC News Monitor pages:

I’m currently doing a science project with one of my home-educated boys and need some information. If you know the answer to the following question or a place I can find it, let me know. A thermos flask works by using a vacuum to prevent heat leaving the liquid. But, if heat can’t travel across a vacuum, how does the sun heat Earth?

There are, I have been told, countless reasons for choosing home education. And as a person who pays handsomely for the privilege of not submitting my children to Local Education Authority schooling, I agree with all of the negative reasons for the choice. But none of the positive reasons. I also agree with the pastoral reasons, but not the academic ones.

Yes, one of the results of twenty years of brainless government interference in education is that local authority schools are now utterly incapable of caring for the individual pastoral needs of children - they are only now capable of caring for the collective needs of clones.

But another one of the results is that the academic efficiency of these schools, when the children fit the pastoral profile, is absolutely staggering. When the system works children are taught in stimulating lessons that have been structured according to accepted and demonstrated theories of learning, monitored with systems that can spot the earliest possible signs of underperformance, aptitude and ability, and given knowledge that has been refined to be the best possible compromise between marketable and functional on the one hand, and personally enriching on the other.

And home schooling parents think they can match this? The father in the above letter has clearly not even heard of ‘Conduction, Convection and Radiation,’ and has isolated himself from the support network that exists to help.

Home education is a very expensive activity - and the parents don’t pay for it.

It is a long way away.
The house prices there make me laugh.
The traffic jams there make me laugh even more.
Pollution is there instead of here.
They think that they have something that the rest of the country doesn’t. (Can we have a list, please? Then we can compare notes.)
Silence (note for Southerners: silence is that strange sensation you get when, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t hear anything at all, not even ‘white noise’ - which in the South is always at a minimum of 65Db.)
Empty skies. (Actually, that’s not fair. The glider club flies over our house, and there are regular balloon flights, too. It’s just that I much prefer that to being on the flightpath for three major airports.)
Snot. Here in the North my snot is green. After just a day in the South it was black.

North-South divide? Yes, it exists.

Thank God for that!

We have just arrived home after two nights in the City of London. No, not London the tourist trap, but the City of London - the financial and business centre of the capital.

And it is nothing like the rest of London. It’s like passing through Pandæmonium, Capital of Hell on your way into a Borg Cube.

We ventured out a couple of times. We went to Shaftesbury Avenue, where I was shafted for an extortionate amount of money in exchange for a small bottle of warm water, and then we watched an exceedingly good play. We also decided against visiting the Globe Theatre because the thought of paying £9 each for a cattle-class tour was not even tempting.

In comparison, the City has wide footpaths, ‘highwalks’ above the traffic, and civilised pubs and restaurants with quiet music, no enormous televisions and plenty of places to sit. Mind you, the whole place is made out of concrete and glass.

And in every restaurant, three quarters of the customers eat alone and the rest fall asleep into their meals.

You get paid loads if you work in the City, but you don’t ‘live’ there.

http://www.bookmooch.com/

You list the books you have but don’t want; you get points for posting them (free of charge) to other members. Then you use your points to claim books from other members.

Utterly, utterly brilliant.

As a treat for being so good about having their bedrooms destroyed by builders, I’ve just taken the kids to the toyshop. And the kids are thrilled.

But the best toy was the playset that Tiny Flirt chose: a battle tank with a set of soldiers.

And a big sign to go with it, reading, “CAUTION! Battle Zone!”

Well, it’s important to avoid litigation.

On Thursday the builders will arrive, erect their scaffolding, and rip the roof off our house so they can build a new bedroom and bathroom up there.

In England in April.

We really didn’t think this through, did we?

Jeremy Paxman couldn’t have put it better himself. Oh, hang on - he did.

ASDFriendly was four years old yesterday, so I celebrated with a glass of whisky and a few thoughts about the dynamics of internet groups.

As well as ASDf, I have been a member of various other forums for almost a decade now, both as an ‘umble oik and an elevated moderator, and have always been interested in how they grow and develop - with similarities and differences to other social groupings. (Come on - I am a sociologist!)

For a start, a forum is a great leveller. You can claim to be anything - and it would be very difficult for your claims to be refuted. And even claims to great knowledge can be made without justification. This story, from Wikipedia, is typical - and not even unusual.

For I while I was a member of a forum of Christians which was always caught up in one argument or another about church law, Biblical interpretation, rightful authority, and that age-old last recourse of the gainsayer, ‘What Would Jesus Do?” The point there was that a claim to qualifications meant nothing. What you wrote would be scrutinised by your opponent, not for its value in the argument, but for ammunition to use against you. What would ordinarily be a winning point in a proper debate is, with depressing regularity, just the last word before the dispute turns into a nasty, poisonous and bitter fight.

This is why a forum needs close supervision. After all, the prevailing culture of any internet forum is not dictated by its owner or administrator. It is dictated by the personalities who spend the most time and energy inputting their ideas into it.

Second, there is the way in which the membership presents itself and then coalesces into groups.

A friendship formed on the internet can be as close as any other; we have made some great friends, and I even know of one romance. Similarly, I remember vividly the reaction at a get together when a loud, outspoken and vivacious forum member turned out to be, in real life, a timid little wallflower.

But as with real life, just being associated with one particular group or another will single you out. And no group is more vulnerable in that respect than the people who own, run or moderate forums.

I discovered this a few years ago when I was on the moderating team at http://www.rejesus.co.uk/ - where I slowly learned that when people knew that you had the heady combination of the power to change posts and the ear of the people in control, they would not trust you in a debate. When a moderator made a simple expression of disagreement it was interpreted as an attempt to impose a particular view; worse, disagreeing with the moderator was seen by some as a challenge - not to the moderator’s own personally held views, but to an imagined authoritative opinion that members were expected to subscribe to regardless of their own opinions.

It begs the questions, if they think that the board owners and administrators demand adherence to a centrally held orthodoxy, then why are they, self confessed dissenters, there? And why haven’t the owners banned them for their dissent? It doesn’t make sense - but then why should it?

The truth is unimportant; if someone has decided that they are going to identify themselves as a community heterodox, then the administrators and moderators are their natural target. It is how many people establish their identities and reputations online. I call it ‘Robin Hood Syndrome.’

And it is the reason why so many forums turn on their creators. I was told last weekend that the creators of Ship of Fools no longer participate in their own forums; I don’t know, because I stopped about four years ago. But I can believe it.

It all hinges on a simple principle. In a forum, disagreement is encouraged. Forums thrive on disagreement. Without disagreement, forums would be boring. So the last thing that any forum member should consider doing is attack another for disagreeing with them.

Disagree right back, with every ounce of your might. It’s what you, they and the forum are all there for.