Holidays

It's the time of year where the papers would normally be filled with those horror stories of parents being fined for taking their children out of school for a family trip to, well, anywhere really. This year we've had a slight reprieve due to the double whammy of the election & royal baby, but give it a few days now & we'll see photos of sad parents clutching their fine letters, and people spouting off that "it never did me any harm" (In the interests of full disclosure, I used to go on holiday in school time & have a degree, so yeah, it never did me any harm)

However, in these days of Callio and fixed penalty notices, as well as the obscene cost of childcare, family holidays during the school holidays are becoming a necessity.  The cost of an extra 2 weeks' childcare negates any possible saving of going on holiday in June, at least around here.

I see complaints about the cost of going away in the school holidays everywhere. But honestly, it doesn't have to cost more, all it takes is a little forward planning. The holiday brochures for 2016 have just come out, and that means there are free and cheap child places available.

In Summer...

We've booked our summer 2016 holiday already, and were able to secure a free child space for Squeaky, in August at a hotel with all the children's activities she could desire (basically a chocolate party & mini-disco) without breaking the bank.  To the extent that we've got a whole year before we have to actually pay for the holiday!  One third off the price to go the week earlier when we couldn't get a free child space, and actually £150 cheaper than going before the schools break up, believe it or not.

We're lucky in the respect that we only have one child - there's usually a limit to the number of free child spaces available per booking (a good reason to go on holiday with the grandparents maybe?), and there is definitely a limit to the number of free child spaces available on any given flight.  But even one free space in a family of 4 or 5 presents a significant saving.  And the cost of childcare for 2 or 3 children? Well, if you haven't got family nearby to ease the burden, the summer break can be financially crippling.  Childcare vouchers only go so far, and they rely on your childcare providers being registered - which not all are.  Same goes for Tax Credits, 70% of childcare costs is a help, but not enough.  The last choice is taking time off work - 5 weeks paid holiday per year doesn't meet the 6 weeks summer holidays, never mind the other 7 weeks of school holidays per year, sick days & last-minute inset days, unpaid leave can be the only way.

I'm not saying I agree with the term time holiday rules, but there is an equation to consider - is the (possibly) increased cost of the holiday offset by the other costs if you take time out from the school calendar - after all, school aren't going to take the children off our hands because we went away in June, are they?  Much as Squeaky's teacher may say she'd happily keep her, I'm sure she doesn't really mean it.

What do you think?

Operation Yewtree

Operation Yewtree, if you've been living under a rock or outside the UK, is the three pronged investigation into the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal, investigating Savile's acts, those perpetrated by Savile with others, and those unconnected with Savile, mostly of people in the public eye from the 1960's - 1980's, which has resulted in a number of high-profile arrests, some of whom have been charged with sex offences. Codenames for investigations are a strange beast indeed, but I think I can figure this one, the investigation started after Savile's death, and Yew trees are often found in graveyards, so it seems fitting for an investigation centred around a dead bloke.

Image (c) www.camerasnaps.org.uk

Operation Yewtree affects almost all of us.  I'm glad to say that like, hopefully, the majority of the people reading this, I was never victim to the abuses of Savile or others in the public eye in the era in which I grew up.  And the world of 2013 is a very different place, with very different attitudes to the time in which the majority of these offences took place.  What was seen as acceptable behaviour at that time, is simply not in the present day - which is undoubtedly a good thing.  Would Are You Being Served? or the Carry On...films be made today, with their poorly disguised innuendo and objectification of women?  I hope not.  Clearly not in the case of the latter, as a number of attempts to revive the series have been made over the last 20 years since Carry on Columbus (and that was a dreadful mistake in itself)

But for anyone who grew up in the UK between the 1960's to 1980's, Operation Yewtree, and the findings of the investigations thus far, have affected us.  They've touched and tainted all our lives.  The rose tinted glasses of childhood nostalgia are scratched and damaged forever.  Those memories of writing to Jim'll Fix It as a class exercise in primary school and the hope against hope your might be picked to have your dreams made reality in front of the nation. Saturday evenings in front of It's A Knockout watching people from across Europe dressed up as ostriches or getting covered in gunge, making fools of themselves for national pride while commentators wet themselves with laughter.

In no way am I suggesting that what I'm feeling is anywhere near what the victims of these offences have gone through.  But for each one of us that watched, and loved their programmes, a little bit of our childhood has been stolen as well.  I don't even know what to equate it to.  The only thing I can come up with is exactly what it is - imagine if...  it's the kind of situation that a few years ago would have been a ridiculous idea.  But here we are today, and it's true.

It makes me scared.  Scared that in those rose tinted days, where like that facebook meme says "we didn't have phones, we climbed trees, scraped knees, our curfew was the streetlights, we licked out the cake mix bowl, and apples & blackberries only came in crumbles", that these things were going on to so many people, by those we all respected and admired, in a time where we felt so safe.  What about the world now?  A world where we feel so much less safe.  The internet has given us so much more access to information, we hear about things we would never have done before, which leads us to feel that the world is less safe (even when crime statistics prove otherwise).  Where does it end?

Scrubbing Up Clean. A post, plus a Palmers Cocoa Body Scrub review

This is a little bit of a puzzle for me, how to word this post.  I was going to write it anyway, and it would have been almost identical, because it's something that I found surprising, interesting, and important, and I wanted to share it with you.  And then I was approached by a PR company, working with a brand I already had in mind as an example of good practice.  So I ran the concept by them, they said "yeah, great", and sent me a sample to go with it.  The post is as it would be otherwise, but now there are some extra images, and a review at the end.  Please read this post as it is intended, a genuine post, the review hasn't changed my opinions or reason for posting in the slightest.

An email landed in my inbox recently, from the Marine Conservation Society.  I like to give them a read, there's often something interesting, but this one article really caught my eye.  It spoke about the increasing damage to our seas, caused by plastics, and specifically microplastics, which can be found in certain cosmetics, including scrubs & peels.  Now, I must confess I'm a bit of a scrubber, and I've found that a regular scrub has done wonders for the chicken skin on the tops of my arms.

This email really shocked me, I hadn't thought about there being plastic in my cosmetics.  And the first scrub I'd bought (at least in recent memory) was a very very natural one, filled with oats & sugar, more like my breakfast porridge than anything else. All it was liable to give a passing fish was a healthy breakfast.  But that one had run out, and I'd won a different brand's body scrub, which I was now using instead.  After reading this email, I went off to the shower to have a check, and there, among the ingredients, was Polyethylene terephthalate (PET).  Shock.  It did explain though, why there was now a layer of goop regularly appearing in the bottom of my shower, which there hadn't been previously.  It was at this point I started planning this post.

I checked the other members of my shower collection, and the majority were free of plastics, mostly because the brands I buy for myself tend to be at the more natural end of the market.  Plastics can appear in ingredient lists as Polyethylene / Polythene (PE), polypropylene (PP) or Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), so these were the words I was keeping an eye out for.

With Christmas fast approaching (there! I said it!), I know that pampering treats such as scrubs are likely to appear in many a Christmas stocking.  Wouldn't it be great if this year, we could all make an effort to make sure that the gifts we give are going to protect our seas, as well as treat our loved ones?  A minute checking the labels could make all the difference to reducing the plastic soup that is growing in the oceans as a result of the plastics that are washed down our drains & into the environment.

Before plastics started to be used in scrubs, companies used products such as salt, sugar, sand, coconut & cocoa beans.  So I was happy to give Palmers new Cocoa Body Scrub a try.  I'd tried their facial scrub in the past, and found it suited my skin, and didn't contain any of the plastics I was concerned about.  So the Body Scrub would be ideal to replace the offending scrub which has now been banished to the recycling bin, where its plastics can be melted down into something useful.

I wasn't disappointed.  The scrub smells divine.  Honestly, I've wanted to gnaw my arms off, because they smell so gorgeously chocolatey.  It's not sweet & cloying, just a subtle scent of chocolate, which gives me a lift when the day's getting too long for comfort.  The crushed cocoa beans have a gentle exfoliating effect, taking off the dead skin cells, and brightening the skin, whilst the shea butter smoothes & soothes redness.  I'd post a picture of my upper arms here as proof, but that's a difficult photo to take on your own!  To be honest, it's actually far more effective than the now-banished plasticky scrub, and I can kind of see why.  Microplastics are likely to be even shaped, round beads.  There's only so much effect something smooth can have. By their nature, crushed beans, sand, salt, sugar, etc are going to be slightly rougher. Not so much as to cause discomfort, but enough to work better.

I was already a scrubber, as I said (it's been said before, much to the amusement of certain people) but now I'm a plastic-free scrubber.  I'm definitely going to be checking ingredients more carefully from now on, both because I believe the natural products are more effective, and to protect the environment.  Will you join me in being a plastic-free scrubber?

Disclosure. I received an email from the Marine Conservation Society, but was not asked to blog about the issue.  I had already chosen to blog about the issue when I was approached by Palmers.  I was provided with the Cocoa Body Scrub free of charge for the purpose of this review. I was not told what to write, by Palmers or the Marine Conservation Society, and all opinions are my own.  Links are provided for your convenience, I am not a member of any affiliate scheme and will not receive reward for their use.

What would you do?

I'm just home from town, and outside the supermarket, where they often have charity collections, was something a bit different.  A stall from our local police force, asking people to take part in an interactive survey.  People were given £100 in varying denominations (toy money, sadly) and asked to distribute the money between 7 boxes with different priorities on them, to show where you think the police should be spending their/our cash.

Well, I thought to myself, that's easy enough.  Until I started.  The 7 boxes were:

• Tackling Hate Crime (domestic abuse, racial, gender, dis/ability, homophobic abuse)
• Tackling Violent Crime
• Reducing Burglary
• Tackling Drug-related crime
• More visible police/PCSOs on the beat
• Combating Terrorism/Extremist attacks
• Reducing Anti-Social Behaviour

Well. How hard was that?  They're so connected. There was no "reducing speeding", "picking on innocent motorists", "paperwork", or "going for a takeaway" (our village Police Station is 5 doors from a Chinese takeaway & the officers seem to be regular customers).

I really struggled, I mean.  More visible policing will, by its nature, reduce anti-social behaviour. Tackling drug-related crime is likely to show a reduction in burglary & violent crimes.  It's things like this that make me very glad I don't have to make big strategic decision like that.  What would you do?  (argh! I sound like Jodi Picoult!)

© Imabase | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

I asked Squeaky what she wanted to spend the money on, and she said "give it to Daddy", but apparently that's not allowed.  Shame, he'd've appreciated it!

Dilemma

I have a million things I want to blog about right now.  Some of them might even be interesting!  However, I don't have a huge supply of brains to write coherent posts with, and the spare braincells I do have are being directed firmly at the issues I want to blog about, rather than blogging about them.

There's one post I desperately want to write while it's relevant, but to be fair, I feel I should approach the company in question for comment prior to publishing.  There's a question.  What would you do?  It's not a review, it's a genuine experience we've recently had with a major company, who many of you may be using in the near future, and a case of not delivering on what they promised and failing to communicate this.  The post is going to be strictly true & accurate, not emotional, but a wee bit angry.  They haven't asked me to write about them, they don't know anything about the blog at present.

But thinking about other media, if this were a magazine, there would be a box at the bottom saying "Xcorp declined to comment".  If it were TV, Esther Rantzen or Lynn Faulds-Wood (I'm old, OK?) would chase the CEO down the street with a camera crew asking why they let their customers down.  Should I, as a blogger, follow the same principles of balanced reporting & right to reply?  Or should I say "My blog, my opinions, like it or lump it"?