Little footwear

The more littles side of me loves just messing about in the outdoors which was pretty much we we did back then  although when it came to actually getting me shoes on, I needed me laces fastening and sometimes refastening when the odd time they came undone.

A times with inevitably the laces became undone this provided much amusement of the boys in my class as one would have to help me with it lest I tripped up which would get us all in trouble.

They weren't exactly disability aware shall we say but we got by and we had adventures!

Sixty years on

 We'll see how the weather pans out this week but before that great big depression lands we'll look at a couple of things.

Things on my mind this week looking more around the history of this blog are laws coming in next month that coverimage usage such as any that may connect minors with fetishes or kinks and permissions and these appear to be retrospective.

The other element is Googles revised policies and thing they have in common is while you wouldn't wish to include material that clearly was portraying someone - could be legal adult - enaging in any fetish or sexual acts some areas remain problematic such as depictions even fully clothed of say a spanking that in our day we'd of seen ourselves in publications if we didn't get them first hand as it were and this blog owner certainly did.

Unless any image clearly crosses the line, I'm leaving historic posts in but it would be unlikely I'd consider using *any* image however tame today for a new post.

The other thing is something if you're a member of a coal mining family you know too much about and that is the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster near Merthyr, South Wales which still upsets me deeply to be honest,like.

It hit areas like mine with substancial amounts of Welsh mining families hard, my own grandad worked in the North East Wales coalmines before move up here and we recall the very sudden tidying up of coal waste piled up around our coal mines, no doubt fear what sadly had happened there could of happened even here with industrial villages immediately downstream of them.

Nothing really felt the same as much as life has to go on amid the recriminations and justified bitterness around how the families were treated.

Thus today, just take a moment to reflect on that loss.

Radio Radio

Travelling about can be fun with talks of station improvements, closures of stops and so on so I'm keeping abreast as it were although I have my tickets at the ready.

We were talking a bit last week about broadcasting with the focus more on television but much has changed from the days we had BBC National Radio, Local Radio and the then new exciting Independent Local Radio looked after the the IBA producing different programs funded through advertising of often with a local bent.

I still can recall the Ads on Beacon Radio with their strong Black Country feel, unspoilt by progress compared to the more glitzy ones on the likes of Piccadilly Radio in Manchester but most of that has gone to national shows with a computer sorting the music and just a few minutes per hour of local news.

In recent years the BBC has imposed a de facto regional programming selection on it's stations where ours (Stoke) was heavily into community as was WM in South Staffs/Black Country and Brum.

It's no secret I like Boom Radio as a national station - the mix of music with no genre restrictions or playlist only mentalities and presenters who engage with the audience is up my alley - but they dropped the experimental Boom Rock after September 30th.

I liked the idea but if you don't want just a playlist that Spotify and the like can give you anyway you need lots of presenters, ideas for specific shows and that will cost money plus it was internet/streaming only.

That's sad but I feel they're better concentrating on the core brand which will have national tv ads in November and Boom Light which the more 50's and light music which there is some demand for maybe looking at something like a rock hour or two in the evenings presented by someone who knows it well and so produces a show for the evening with topics and featured artists.

I tend to find just the same 100 songs per decade stations do little for me as when Boom plays Beatles or Bowie they often go for an album track rather than the obvious hits giving a bitter insight into the artist.

Changes on the airwaves

 Broadcasting is going through a period of rapid change and restructuring presently, we've talked about it elsewhere as it applies to children's television and radio with programming being offered over the internet that the user selects. new entrants who can produce and distribute programming without the associated costs of legacy linear channels broadcast from antennas and satellite.

On the top of of the periodic review of the BBC right to raise funds and for what with the licence fee they collect money for, d,  the new BBC Director General is looking with some might say a more harder nose than most at what it does.

The programs and the (legacy) extra linear channels most of which started in various forms from around 1998/9 as a early ONdigital subscriber I remember well from the days of BBC Knowledge and Choice starting on channels 7 and 9.

They became BBC 3 and BBC 4.

ITV and Channel Four started sidebar channels back then such as ITV2, E4 and FilmFour so the BBC were not unique in it but what may of made sense at the turn of the century may not some twenty-five years on.

BBC 3 started in 2008 and was really targeted at those in their late teens to early thirties with a good number of freshly commisioned programs, some that were successfuly like Gavin and Stacey and others not.

Even back in 2016 it was found most of these viewers were watching via the iPlayer so given the expense of putting it out over antenna and satellite decided to make it online only.

The BBC Board of Governors reviewed it and decide it was to go back to being broadcast in 2021 arguing this audience had a right to a specific broadcast channel.

Leaked suggestions and internal redundencies are set up now suggesting this could go yet again with an announcement in a week or with talk of BBC Scotland a seperate Scottish channel for non Gaelic scots  going to attracting miniscule viewing figures but very much backed by Scottish politicians.

In an age when much can be found online can channels with poor viewing figures and a struggle to generate new content can you continue to pay for things few watch and in the instance of BBC 3, could not the programs go on BBC2 when we have seen a high proportion of repeats never mind repeats of repeats?

Forum things

 Weekend was not really as I wanted it to be being very poorly over several days so we're playing catch up but too much catch up can bring set backs so I will keep things fairly short this week.

The Past World is challenging not least when much before the Nineteen Nineties for many seems a foreign land where much they alone grew up just doesn't exist, people do things very differently and the World of the Child is so much more different.

Our world back then was highly deferential to adults, we took our caps of to them, their word was final and to a large extent they could do what they wanted within reason where other adults would look on and say "Well, you knew the rules and what would happen if you transgressed them" and no Childline to call.

Thus school life, going to your friends had known sanctions if you were cheeky,rude or went out of bounds.

We could laugh at others in that situation, knowing at the same time it could be us so it went in childrens fiction and drama one being the classic "Whack-O" radio and Television series from the mid nineteen fifties.

These days it'd be hard to make a long-running series based on a schoolmaster who took pleasure in thwacking his charges and swindling everyone. Fortunately, in olden days sense prevailed and it was the world the child then lived in.

Linking say a radio dramatization to that today can cause issues because modern thinking sees caning as at least potentially Child Abuse and is illegal, period in the UK today although when it was made it was common place as my bottom still remembers.

We opted to carry the link but not publish the title, relying in "common knowledge"  because it is a classic and has some excellent acting.

The other thing is about Who we are.

When the forum was set up, it was more of a Boys Club of ex Schoolboys who loved revisiting that time, the uniform we wore, the education we had, our likes and dislikes and boys we had and still have which was and remains refreshing free from some of fetish things that get attached at other places.

We have female members and they are free to talk about their backgrounds and what being school girls meant to them.

I am aware we have some who may not of been "born" female who do like wearing girls uniform and I do wish to say that is quite acceptable and apart from being only posting within our rules that is it.

Be yourself by all means but treat others as you yourself wish to be treated.

Not what you asked for...

When you get around to reading this, then the likelihood is I'm getting ready to go out to meet some family members for lunch and conversation which for various reasons has been put off for nearly a year and a half.

Arrangements have been made for any parcels that are likly to come and I've been out as normally today is the day I tend to be out.

Sometimes that goes through messy spells such as one item I did want after being checked after being paid for I'm informed it skips on two tracks and has a scratch on another so I request a cancellation with full refund only to be met with a "Can I offer you a discount?" but when this is an expensive record do I really want a only playable on one side copy?

Not really. Why would I???

Then there's the tale of the broken record whose replacement arrives from a totally different seller in a different part of the UK and is a different edition to the one I paid for and it has a thumb size tear on the front where the One had I had paid for did not.

There are clear rules about this "drop shipping" on platforms such as Ebay as it muddies the waters when it comes to accountability and in any event what you paid for such be what you get unless you are informed later and they ask you if that's acceptable.

It's one of the things in this era of reduced physical stores that irritates me as we depend on the honesty and intergrity of vendors and this is continuing.

The school year begins different

This year, strictly speaking this academic year feels different and it's not the never ending arguments over school uniforms - excessive logoization, are skirts and shorts acceptable? or even the "right to free expression, man" topics.

Nor is it school dinners as in entitlements to free ones although that will change in 2027/8 which pleases me, or the rumblings over what should be permitted in them which we've had yet another statement on or the sandwich box police confiscating items put in by parents that aren't allowed.

This year our amazingly bad council decided to axe free school transport for those over 11 for distances of three miles or less as a child just turned 11 in Junior can't walk it and at 11 and bit and moving to the First Years of a high school somehow can now.

Now this means going on partly pavement free roads with heavy traffic, lots of  concealed spots where nasty people can lurk to do nasty stuff to kids on a three mile each way walk.

It was protested, rightly I might add, but no change made so some who can afford the £800 per year per child can pay for a fee paying bus organized by the school by a local coach company but many can't.

So guess what happens?

Those children's parents enrol them very late in the day into a school five miles away that they do have provide free transport for which means the LEA has to put another bus on at cost.

The stupidity of Groan Ups is outstanding as they now lose savings and by reducing pupil numbers at the other school means a number of senior posts will have to go as they're no longer getting the "per pupil" funding.

It also means this September I see few children walking to the school bus around 8am and instead see others in their plainer uniform go past instead as locals have voted with their feet at such a rediculous policy.

All this happens when parents are no longer able to afford to send their children to the nearest school.