Clampdown on excessive speeders

Article
Excessive speeders are drivers who frequently drive way to hard. The proposal is that there will be a bigger contrast between major and minor speeding offences. Excessive speeders will be punished a lot harder in comparison to the non-frequent speeding offender. They hope to separate the anti-social driver from the drivers who are behaving. Furthermore is there spoken about drugs-policy. Again, the frequent drug drivers should be kept an eye on and punished a lot harder. The problem with drugs is that it is very hard for the Police on the road to conclude what kind of drugs the driver has used.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7738919.stm

Reaction
It sounds like a fair idea to me. I think there is a big difference between excessive speeders and coincidental speeding offenders. When offending a speed limit you can’t immediately label that driver as a anti-social driver. I think it is still possible to be a good driver if you cross the speed limit with only a few miles. The excessive speeders however truly show that they lag responsibility and have no care for the other drivers on the road at all. I know it’s hard to decide where to place the border between excessive speeders and less social drivers. That is a true downside of this proposal. But if you find a good solution for that: it sounds good to me.

Free meal plan for Scots pupils

The Scottish government set up a plan to provide free meals for pupils(5 to 7 year olds) in primary school. Every child between the 5 and 7 years old should be able to get a free meal in school by 2010. This project is already being piloted and it seems to work well. The amount of meals taken in school increased from 53% to 75%! The project’s aim is to fight obesities. This growing health-problem can be fought by providing the right diets for children. Children will learn to try new food and will get used to eating healthy food. However, not everyone is convinced. Who is going to pay for these free meals? President of Cosla, Pat Watters, says there is no need to worry because the government has a budget of £40m to provide these meals.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/7646898.stm

Reaction:
Sounds like a very good idea. I’m certain that children can be thought to eat heathy food even though they probably wont like some of the food the first time. They will find healthy food which they like and learn to eat what they like less. It is very motivating that the meals are for free. In the beginning it can help to support the project and make it popular. In the end it won’t be necessary to provide the meals for free I think. You can just split the costs in two. One half for the parents and one half for the government. I think most parents will still be enthusiastic when they have to pay so less for their kid’s meal.

UK Hostages on Saudi tanker named

Article:
Previous Saturday a Saudi oil tanker has been seized by Somali pirates. It is the Sirius Star. It can be loaded with 2million barrels of oil which is worth more than £67 million. The tanker was attacked near the Kenyan coast. On this tanker are 25 crew members of which two of them from the UK. Their names have been tracked and they are Peter French and Peter Grady. Their families hope that Peter and James will return soon. Negotiations have begun and Frank Gardner from the BBC said that the pirates want to get rid of the load as soon as possible. The last thing they want is a bloodbath so probably the crew gets away unharmed. The amount of attacks by pirates on vessels is rising. This year more that 90 took place.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7737969.stm

Reaction:
It's possible that 'pirates' become a new threat for trading ships. Apparently it allready is but you don't hear a lot about it in the news yet. Many people are suprised to hear about pirates. I also thought that pirates were long gone history. But when you think about it, it's not a strange idea because especially the oil-vessels are worth a lot, lot of money. These vessels are not very well protected yet so it's probably not very hard to hijack them. The problem could be easily solved though by trainging and arming the crew of the ships and/or guard the vessels by the navy.

When should a child go into care?

Article:
There is a lot going on because of the death of Baby P. One thing became clear: child-care needs to be improved in the UK. The NSPCC estimates that every ten days, a child is killed by it's parent. The death of baby P made us think about when a child is taken into care. How do they decide a child should be taken into care? Maybe we should place less value on the belief that children are always better off with their parents. This has been the belief of social services. Prof. Nick foster declares: ‘being shifted from one foster home to another can lead to children losing faith in society and falling into crime.’ However, social workers might hold back to long with concluding a child is abused or neglected because of the fear of being wrong.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7735464.stm

opinion:
I can imagine that it’s very hard to decide if a child is being abused or not. And second, how should the child be helped. I think it is still very good that social workers are trying to keep the child with it’s parents. A good foundation of a mans youth is important. But let’s be realistic. When a parent beats up him/her child as much as baby P, I think a social worker should not hesitate to take the baby away from it’s parents. A social worker should be more confident when making such decisions. Therefore, a social worker should be help less responsible for the child I think. This way pressure can make way for action.