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One of the things that has been puzzling me for a few days about the channel tunnel fire is this:

My car is not allowed to be taken through the tunnel as it is powered by LPG. Fifty litres of liquid petroleum gas is considered too risky and hence me and my Butane burning bretheren are banned from accessing this mode of travel. However a wacking great lorry load of volatile and highly combustible chemicals is permissable and as a result there was a major fire and the tunnel is severely damaged.

Not much to do with a youthwork but I'll use my usual excuse of hey, maybe there is a great metaphor in here somewhere. (Or maybe it's not only the channel tunnel that's a massive bore!)

"The voluntary youth workforce is facing radical reforms as part of a strategy to improve youth services in England"

Article here!

If you are involved with young people in Oxfordshire and you fancy meeting up with like minded others, then George is hosting a get together on Saturday. Click continue

A recent case where a man who had thousands of indecent images of children on his computer has not featured as predominantly in the media as I would have thought .... it does however raise HUGE concerns in my mind!

Phillip Carmichael, the defendant, who had 7000 indecent images of children has Parkinson's disease. The medication he was on does have some bizarre side effects including 'hypersexuality,' it was this that the defence argued successfully that was the cause of his behaviour and the downloading of these images. So successful was this argument that Carmichael was given an absolute discharge.

While I have sympathy for Carmichael in terms of the disease that he has and the undoubtedly weird side effects of the medication, the case does raise questions in my mind.

1. Concerns about medication becoming a legitimate defence for abuse.
2. Concern for young people who are/have been abused and the message this sends.
3. BUT the biggest worry for me is it seems to be a legitimizing children being sexual objects. The medication creates 'hypersexuality' and I'm wondering whether this means the removing of all sexual taboo or morals or rather that it gives vent to existing sexuality?
I found a 2006 report on impulse control disorders in Parkinsons treatment that talks about medication leading to "disinhibited beviours

"disinhibited behaviors, things that patients "have had some interest in but suddenly [it] becomes a passion or addiction, like gambling, Internet card-playing, or various kinds of sexual activity -- even shopping."

There definitely appears to be a worrying question hanging here about hypersexuality.

I'm not sure why I wrote all this, I think that having read about this case in the newspaper I felt uncomfortable about it and wanted to further explore why that was?

PRESS RELEASE READS:

Nine months of research into the future of Christian Youth Work in England

has culminated in a urgent appeal to Government Ministers to take youth work more seriously and to Denominational heads to motive their Churches to action.

FYT is calling for Churches and Christian organisations to commit 25% of their income on working with young people, particularly marginalised young people, in order to take the needs of those outside of the church more seriously.

'With the media tending to demonise young people with such negative reporting , many of the general public are afraid to be in conversation with them. Christians need to sloth off their fears and engage with a generation that will soon give up entirely on the church if we are not careful,' says Dave Wiles, Chief Executive of FYT.

Working in partnership with '2009: Year of The Child ', Frontier Youth Trust is currently developing a FREE resource to assist Churches in celebrating young people in their communities and empowering them to reach their potential. Entitled, Young People's Sunday, the resource will offer material and tools to help churches celebrate young people throughout 2009.

Church leaders are asked to pledge their commitment to working towards these objectives and specifically respond to the challenges with a firm undertaking to take appropriate action. Churches are also being prompted to lobby politicians to implement a commitment to long term funding of Christian faith based youth work by writing to MPs and Government ministers.

For further information, or to receive a resource pack for Young People's Sunday, please email for details.

Nothing to do with youth work BUT this may make you smile! Five of Americas top voice over artists in one car creating a tribute and possibly a satire of their work, fab!
Watch it here, ht to ST

Oddly this morning I'm feeling spiritually and emotionally energized BUT rather sleepy. The reason for this odd state of affairs is that we have a week of 24-7 prayer happening in Newbury and I was filling the 06:00 slot this morning, a decision I was questioning as I wandered bleary eyed through the rainy darkness of town at five ugh something. Arriving at the 24-7 venue though was great though, the prayer baton was (metaphorically) passed to me by the Baptist Minister and I found myself in a comfortable prayer room with various prayer stations set up and a bit of ambient music playing.

The interesting thing I found was how much difference it made to have a great 'place' to pray as well as the space, the hour flew by! I can't point to any deeply spiritual experience within the hour but I definitely felt different when I left, Sleepy, yes! Energized at a deeper level, yes! Outcome of praying, we'll see!

A film about youth work and developing youth workers by Peter Cutts, it's a bit of an advert for Rank but no less valuable as a result.

Quench have a gig in Oxford coming up and Mark Cox has send me a load of info (click continue reading), October 3rd!

Greetings to anyone who is visiting because of the CYM 'Safeguarding' seminar, thanks for make it such an interesting and earthed session :-)

As promised here are the powerpoint slides: Safeguarding'.pdf

If you live in Bucks please note this training event on Nov 15th. I don't know whether this is an incentive or a disincentive but I'll be there! Training Day Flyer - November 2008.pdf

On Sunday afternoon the rain was taking a brief break (presumably to re-charge ready for it's next onslaught) and I decided there was chance to launch another skirmish in the battle, Macdonald vs Garden.

My garden pretty much goes uphill from the back door. I had begun digging into the slope to extend the small patio, creating a hole that has filled with muddy water, above which is the remaining slope on up to the sheds at the top. However as everything down at the house end of the slope was waterlogged, I busied myself creating a path up by the sheds. All the preparation went fine and I was soon in the position to be adding a top layer of 20mm* gravel. So I fetched a wheelbarrow load of the stones from in front of the house and returrned to just outside the back door ready for the uphill task (literally) of getting them to the sheds.

Getting the wheelbarrow up the slope is a challenging task which involves accelerating rapidly on the small patio area and using that momentum to swerve around the water filled hole and with a few well delivered steps continue on up to a more level and stable area. (I don't really need to write the rest do I?

The takeoff went well, myself and the heavily loaded barrow hit the slope at a brisk pace. I was carrying sufficient forward momentum to round the hole and still be upward bound. However with only a few inches to go I discovered that the grass was too sodden to inject the extra boost required to reach safety ..... and thus I stopped. There was no way I could get the barrow moving again and at this point gravity coughed and gently revealed it's presence by edging myself and the barrow backwards down the slope. Not too much of a problem UNTIL it became obvious that the barrow was going to complete its' return rather faster than I was. The barrow pitched me over, dumped me into the hole and thankfully fell over, meaning that I didn't get run over, merely coated with gravel.

So if you wondered how I spent my weekend, I spent some of it in a water filled mud hole covered in gravel and laughing.

The reason I write this is I thought it could be a great metaphor for something! (I just don't know what)

* I know you didn't need to know the size of the gravel!

I'm always amused by the esoteric jargon used in our different 'industries' and youth work is not immune from this by any means. My favourite ecclectic language is that of the dentist BUT I was quite amused to be following this van through a traffic jam and wondering what 'Manhole Rehabilitation' might be? (Good to know that people are doing redemptive work among the fertile mission field of street ironwork though eh!)