Another option to manage junk and unwanted communications

In this lead up to the local elections, I am more conscious of the amount of junk mail we get through our letter box.

Most people have come across the Mail Preference Service, which is a free service to help you manage that unwanted junk mail that usually ends up straight in the recycling unread (at least if you are anything like our household).

I got an email about a new free service called Choose Your Mail, which takes the MPS a bit further by allowing you specify what direct mail you don't mind receiving.

Apparently, UK households receive something like 6.3 billion items of junk mail per year and most of it ends up in the bin unread.

In addition, if you receive annoying cold calls on the telephone, there is also the Telephone Preference Service to try out.

It isn't foolproof but it does reduce the calls a bit.

I haven't tried this yet but there is also an Email Preference Service to, which is another weapon against spam.

Trading Standards are the place to go if your life continues to be hounded by unsolicited calls, post or emails.

Are children safe in the UK or are we exaggerating and worsening the risks?

I was reading the Observer yesterday, which had an excellent Climate Change issue with Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead as the guest editor.

He helped launch the Friends of the Earth "Big Ask" Campaign, to lobby the government to bring in a 3% carbon reductions year on year to reach the 60% reduction needed by 2050. Watch an interview with him here.

In amongst it was an article about what could be the greenest city in the world, namely Freiburg, Germany. I remember going there in my teens on a school trip in the late 1980s and thought it was great. There were a few mediaeval bits that allied bombing in WWII had not completely destroyed, and a brilliant tram. Trams were a novelty to me then and now, although I did use the one in Sheffield when I was studying there in the 1990s.

What struck me most about this article was not the climate change angle and public transport options. It was a picture with little toddlers, not older children, playing in a woodland on bits of plank and felled trees. It was called "an adventure site" an was largely Freiburg's answer to a children's playground.

How can this be? Where is the health and safety? What about splinters? Is this irresponsible?

The kids looked like they were having a great time but being a father to a toddler myself, I could feel my concern rising as the planks and log was in no way secured and looked like something I would have put together when I played with my friends in the 1970s.

But isn't that the point?

Don't get me wrong, I am a Dad and have baby number 2 on the way. I worry about my kids and my natural instinct is to not let any harm come to them.

What I struggle with is letting my son grow up and explore the world around him. I'm pleased to say that he has a cautious head on his shoulders and still gets cuts and bruises as evidence of him trying new things out and learning about his environment, and maybe having some fun along the way.

Should we be protecting children or should we be teaching them to spot potential risks and manage them?

The Noise To Signal blog has collected together some info on the old child safety films that many of us grew up with. It is amazing how long this tough line in parenting has been going with children made to see a little squirrel, Tufty, narrowly avoid becoming road kill by a wise owl, or the scary tales of the unfortunate Charley the cat.

Tim Gill's is an expert in this area and you can read more at his site Rethinking Childhood .

Maybe we are playing it too safe? Before I became a parent, I thought that there was a lot of scaremongering.

You hear about flashers and worse near children's playgrounds as if it is worsening problem. The fact is, bad people have always been around and there are probably no more around now than in the past. My Mum surprised me once by recounting a story of being flashed by some pathetic man in the 1940s when she was growing up in the country. She was so matter of fact about it and even managed a cheeky joke about saying how "he had nothing to boast about"! ;-)

What I want is for my children not to be scared, be in control and to be able to deal with what life throws at them and hopefully have good lives.

Wrapping them up in cotton wool, fitting GPS devices to their clothing and even locking them indoors is not going to help them.

As Tim Gill would say, adults worry about children (which is ok) but where we probably go wrong is by trying to make childhood zero risk.

Wouldn't it be even better if we taught our children how to manage risks not to always avoid them?

Maybe they would grow up better able to deal with life and have a great childhood in the process?

I did, although the thought of my son climbing and jumping out of trees is starting to give me palpitations.....

Future of waste in Norfolk - have your say

Norfolk County Council is inviting residents of the county to have their say on the future of how household waste is managed in the county.

You can complete the questionnaire online , or download it, or request it by email.

The deadline for completed questionnaires is 11th April 2008.

Visit this link for some useful background and related links to help you decide on what the priorities are.

The annoying and undermining thing for me was that I got a hard copy of this questionnaire about waste management in Norfolk as an insert when I bought a copy of the Eastern Daily Press newspaper today, which was wrapped in clear plastic just to emphasise that it was on sale for 25p today.

Big thumbs down to the EDP for being rubbish by creating unnecessary rubbish with this needless packaging!

Prime Minister Brown and the Bags of Doom

Got an email to say that Number 10 has responded to the online petition to put a tax on plastic carrier bags.

You can read the Number 10 response here. The original petition "Introduce a tax on plastic carrier bags" was signed by 1,964 people when it closed on 28th February. May not seem a lot but it does at least give you hope that a few like minded people with a worthy cause are occasionally listened to by the government.

Hopefully we will soon stop seeing these bags flapping around in trees and discarded on our streets and countryside. We shouldn't wait for the government to act though, and keep on leading by example by reusing bags, refusing new ones at supermarkets if they try to pack for you, or using non-plastic ones.

Join the "Stamp It Out" Campaign

It is my view that there is only one race, the human race. And yet we see and experience inequality and discrimination.

In the UK we are lucky that we have a voice and most people recognise and increasingly speak out against racisim and inequality.

One of the most subtle forms of reinforcing false difference, and promoting inequality is the use of language.

This is most dramatic in its effect when you consider the work of charities such as Survival International. They and their supporters fight for fair and equal rights for tribal peoples around the world.

The power of the media can be a force for good and if innappropriate language is chosen instead, the media can be a force for harm.

Using words such as "primitive" or "stone age" are more than innacurate or insulting - they can be a way of building a campaign to justify the supression and persecution of contemporary tribal peoples.

If you are like minded, please visit the Survival International link to get involved in the "Stamp It Out" campaign.

This campaign is just over 2 years old and I think it is worth me giving it some promotion, and getting involved myself.

Survival's Stamp It Out campaign aims to challenge racist descriptions, however unwitting, of tribal peoples in the media.

Several examples are cited by Survival and perhaps suprisingly, although regrettably, the UK is not exempt. A UK example of such innappropriate descriptions and language in the media is the article entitled 'Face to face with Stone Age man' in the Daily Mail on 21st July 2007.

Visit the Survival web site to get involved and find instructions on how to send one of the Stamp It Out postcards or e-cards to make a real difference to people's lives.

Make your town climate-friendly with the Greenpeace EfficienCity

Greenpeace has just launched a natty 3D interactive virtual city called "EfficienCity".

Its aim is to show how we in the UK can fight climate change, although it is being blogged about all over the world like at the excellent EcoGeek site.

It is a fantastic resource with a huge amount of information on the different options available to us, from saving energy to generation from renewable sources.

The way it is presented and the large amount of photographs, videos, and technical presentations make it a brilliant educational resource for individual citizens, schools, and the workplace.

You can even download the whole thing to run it offline with a PC version (51.5MB) and a Mac version (53.6MB).

You can take it further than just learning and you are invited to join Greenpeace's campaign to put pressure on you local council to find out what they are doing about climate change and securing a sustainable energy for the future. You can encourage your council to work with experts in Greenpeace to increase access to decentralised energy generation.

Whatever your views on Greenpeace, this is an excellent educational resource about the options we have to respond to climate change. Tell as many people as you can about it.

Support the Save our Puppet Theatre Campaign

The Evening News newspaper has been running a campaign to save the Norwich based Puppet Theatre following the planned cut to Arts Council cuts.

These cuts are tantamount to what has been described as "cull" for arts in the region, and may be the death nell for the Puppet Theatre.

The strategy appears to be to kill off arts at smaller venues and centralise it in larger metropolitan cities.

As only one of two such theatres in the country, this is essentially killing off a national treasure that has over the years given children and families pleasure and has fed their imaginations.

Information about the campaign, the petition, and video news items can be found on the Evening News web site.

Last weekend saw an event organised with hundreds of people attending and staging a march in the city to show support for the theatre, and protests against the cuts and the shambolic and questionable way in which decisions appear to have been reached on the funding.

You can watch a video of the event here.

You can download and display these campaign posters from the site.

Poster 1

Poster 2

You can make your neighbourhood better with mySociety

If your neighbourhood has a problem with graffiti, unlit lampposts, fly tipping, broken paving slabs, why not do something about it rather than get cross behind closed doors?

There is a fantastic web site that was started in February this year called Fixmystreet.com(formerly Neighbourhoodfixit) and it provides a straightforward and effective way to notify your local council of such problems.

This site was built by the charity mySociety and funded by the Department for Constitutional Affairs Innovations Fund.

I have tried it out a couple of times relating to graffiti and was amazed at how quickly Norwich City Council responded and removed it. Well done them! :-)

Regretfully, the individual/s came back and added more graffiti on 2 of the 3 sites I reported, and the web site provides a feature to allow you to report the status of problems, not least to report when they are fixed.

I haven't given up yet.

Who knows, my next step might be to find out who my District Councillors, County Councillor, MP or MEP are using another of mySociety’s services TheyWorkForYou.com, and sending them messages via their WriteToThem.com site?