Introducing That Boarding School Girl

First post of the month where vacations end and school, college and university for some begin.

If you hadn't noticed there is something different about this blog from the last time or two since you looked at it although this has been on the cards for quite a long time, the last eighteen months really, so I think I'll explain it in question and answer form.

Q: Why did you change the title?
A: I changed it because in truth it was always the that bit more middle, more grown up version of my other (littles) blog dealing more with discussion of topical matters which came from the same spot that in English and General Studies we'd debate and present ideas from different angles that were to do with our world in a way that the other blog while marking events doesn't.

Q: Did you not like "Daytime Office Girl Crisis" as a identity for this blog?
A: I did, and I liked it heaps but that had no space for my middles side which is where I've always been at and the pressure of keeping that suppressed on a blog which is about my life rather than purely a hobby or interest was too much. That's what lead to having to explain this last year to you all.

Q: The blog layout looks a little different than it did. Why?
A: There a few reasons one is this blog goes back to 2006 and the displays on computers back then were smaller typically 1200 x 800 and 4:3 aspect ratio so the layout settings were narrower to accommodate people using smaller screens. Mine for instance was 800 x 600!
Also around that period some notebooks came out with screens of 1000 x 600  which may of widescreen but not that great. Today most are 1366 x 768 or better so I decided to more of that space for a less cramped presentation. This is set at 1050 so should be good for 1280 upward.
I have emphasized the page tabs for a more clearer easy to find look in line with my littles blog.

Q: Did you go to a boarding school at all?
A: Yes I did and I truly loved it, being an important part of what made me who I am.

Q: I see you kept a bit of that Shoujo Manga feel in this blog.
A: I couldn't think of a good reason to remove it as Manga art and anime as an animated cinematic art form all come from my middles side as no doubt teens and young people today develop their interest it too. As well, that was one the first communities to accept me as I am.

Q: You mention acceptance, was there any group that this blog was aimed at that played a part in this change?
A: Yes, the Angels who were the main group who read this blog to which I was very nervous talking about my middle side to but given how central it is to being me I talked at their forum about it and they just accepted it. I'd like to thank Jo Angel and the members for that.

Q: When you say it's a middles blog, are we going to see anything change much since I first started following you  a few years ago?
A: When it comes to the interest and hobbies that I'll be writing on, there won't be any  because that's always come from that side of me and those things that are more related to my middles lifestyle will go on the other blog. What it does mean is I can be more open about being me, allowing space for a fleeting reference to a  part of such as going away with like minded friends so while you won't get account of that, I can say I did or mention aspects of this life where it may help.

Q: Will there be any shared posts between your littles blog and this?
A: A few of which one is scheduled for tomorrow such as book reviews where my reading ability is badly impacted by my disabilities so I read more Junior Fiction and the odd music post. In general though the content on here will be unique to it.

Q: So it won't be 'littles' blog with post after post about toys, stuffies and age regression?
A: Exactly! The change  just allows me the space to be more open about this and where some sides of my life come from when it's needed.
Think of it as being the Journal of That Boarding School Girl, because there's little here than I'd of put in one at the time and that's my headspace.

Rearranging the deckchairs in Brussels

This week between the smoke from a USB port that needs replacing when I get a newer XP Pro machine and the soccer from Brazil comes today's post. Yip just think of the delights of posting in Pale Moon with something whose processors  are circa 2002 being updated to something like 2006 or 7!
One big deal politically has been the choice of European Union Commission President following the European Elections in May.
The British Prime Minister has made a lot of noise and invested much political capital around this for a number of reasons not least the thrashing his party and most of the others took by the anti EU Ukip party in said elections in the UK.
Another set of reasons revolve around how the Commissioner Elect is chosen which in the past was done by the individual Prime Ministers of each EU Country, each repesenting the electorate of each Country being drawn from the Governments so chosen.
It was decided this time around to allow a say for the European Parliament members in this but whereas you might of thought an advance was one member one vote in a secret ballot, instead it's been decided to award votes on the basis of the percentage of the  Europe wide bloc each party is aligned to has even though the choice of the commissioner didn't feature as an Manifesto item of each party and no approval was given on the usual understandings to it.
The other area is the favoured choice is seen as being an advocate for stronger powers for the commission and more inclined to remove powers from National Governments, which in a number countries - quite strongly in the UK - the electorate indicated they did not agree with.
Prime Minister Cameron contends that's a snub to the voters.
Personally I am inclined to agree as even those who do favour European Union membership did want reform of its systems and more respect for the role of Nation states within it.
The voting change does nothing to increase accountability between Commission,  EU Parliament, and Electorate and sends out the wrong message for those who do believe in membership.

Value deminished edition

I think it is beginning to dawn on avid cd collectors and music lovers, the explosion of interest we have had since the formats launch in December 1982 is in steep decline.
One area where it is obvious is in the repackaging of older discs in budget bare bone packs of Five or  complete sets where shewn of anything other than front and rear art they are offered up at bargain prices to try to raise moneys from previous releases that otherwise they wouldn't of.
These sets are typically issued by Sony/Bmg and Warners with some from the formally independent EMI. Many stores report with even with new discs there's a few weeks brisk sales followed by a short sharp drop.
The other area is in sales of older out of print discs via speciality stores, Ebay or Amazon Marketplace where some titles appear to be almost worthless with a few where you might just get $3 in a trade in now.
Even the area of discs I do spend a fair amount of money on specialty Gold re-masters are not impervious to this drop with pricing falling around 40% or more although I suspect coming from relative high prices around 2006 through 2009 it may have a fair bit to do with the fall in peoples disposable income thanks to the economy as many titles being available "for free" on Torrents and other darker parts of the internet for people to download and play on music servers.
Perversely, it was made it easier for me to get some titles that even used were over $100 mark for a good deal less such as a copy of the MFSL gold issue of Sting's Dream of the Blue Turtles for $24. As depreciation doesn't concern me as someone who just buys music to play for pleasure rather than seeing them as financial assets it's no big deal.To me the rationale for buying them is just having great sounding copies of your favourite albums.
Does the cd have a future?

Be who you are

s

I just felt like making a a more inspirational post this week because too many people are feeling they can't express how and what they really feel through fear of ridicule in so-called real lives or in cyber life.
The only issue that really matters when you express yourselves is that it's done in a respectful and polite manner so the ears of those who you want to persuade stay open to the power of your suggestion.

Review time

I don't know what the next line of this entry is likely to be but as we're coming toward the end of the year I normally write a little review bit and I think I shall tonight.
I'll start of talking about the sites I joined or belong to where a number of you readers belong, where we talk about all manner of things such as current affairs, music, fashion and anime. Well I'll take my hat off to you  all as even with the Presidential Election we didn't have much drama and certainly at Google Plus we had some interesting conversations as well as people sharing their talents in photography and digital art.
We had the Olympics and Paralympics, held in London which went extremely well showing just what people really are capable of, those amazing volunteers who helped everyone out.
When it comes to music, I was really impressed with the Roxy Music studio albums cd collection and deserved moans about manufacturing quality control of the American made copies aside, the new Beatles stereo lps that offer some real advantages over previous editions that had been out of print for good period of time.
I'm enjoying having a fibre to the cabinet broadband connection that is reliable and jolly fast for downloading files and watching video content which seems to be altering my habits as regards using the internet goes.
This blog gained some new followers and a big increase in readers over the year so I guess I must be doing something right.
I'd love to see the back of the rain we've had for most of the year flooding people out, damaging crops and leaving me soaking wet when goings.
Thank you, angelic types, bones, Google plusers, weird people of CR for being around
Happy New Year

On gender transition

As some may know I'm very much in favour of equal opportunities, supporting those who challenge older stereotypes as well as supporting groups like Press For Change. 
In the last few days the American Psychiatric Association board of trustees approved the latest proposed revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders otherwise known as DSM-5 to the effect that unlike previous guidance no longer places being Transgendered as a mental disorder.
Today I felt like talking about it.
There are and have been many definitions   of what Transgendered means so much so fallings out over them aren't exactly uncommon but the simplest is you feel an overwhelming urge from within to present socially in a gender role the opposite of what the social norm of someone with your anatomical appearance.
I can see how that can regarded as progress although you say if you yourself are Transgendered, well how do I argue I have a medical need for say re-assignment surgery?
I've always had a this take on it.
It's a language issue at the core. Mental Disorder to some equals mental health issue and you don't wish to be bracketed say with people who maybe deluded. I'd say it's a social/psychological issue stemming from other peoples refusal to allow you to be you.
In order to live you life as you, you don't have to go down the route of taking hormones or having body surgery although hormones apart from developing the breast tissue also have other effects such as mood and so on.
It's a step that takes you toward 'full participation' in the gender role you feel but it's not the whole of it. The whole of it is about your personality, how you project that out in that World that may not know what to expect and for male to females the whole of ones femininity.
Sometimes I feel some people obsess more around GRS as a procedure that has to be gone through rather than the cultivation and expression in their lives of their sense of self.

We want our EU contributions cut!

No apologies to returning to a grown up topic I've spoken about in the past on this blog namely Great Britain and its relationship with the European Union. If you haven't read them, no doubt searching the blog would bring them up.
Anyway, I think most of know the UK has got a large deficit which regardless of what our opinions on how we're reducing it and how that is affecting ordinary folks, we are doing it by reducing the amount of money we spend on government services.
One item of expenditure we have over here is our contribution to the budget of the European Union and there is a lot of talk from them about increasing by around 4 or more percent the budget contributions because it says it needs that to pay for its programs even though most National Governments like ours are doing the opposite ironically to pay for bailouts from the EU!
It is fair to say their is a schism between the opinions of the Political Establishment  here and that of many ordinary people regardless of party politics and it can be summarized as this:
Most Britons like people from Europe, they are happy to visit, co-operate trading with and certainly have no desire for conflict never mind war with them. The one thing they will not accept is a political Europe with it's own sovereign parliament, binding Europe wide laws, financial regulation and currency.
That's because they have a proud history of having one of their very own to which they remain happy with.
Now in the last few days because their is a split between the generally pro EU Liberal Democrat half of the Government and the more anti Political EU Tories meetings were held and the Tory Prime Minister decided he was going to argue at the upcoming EU Budget meeting for a Freeze in contributions , the idea being in time it would have to reduce some of its ambitions.
Unfortunately for him many of those of his party not in the Cabinet thought otherwise wanting a cut on the grounds that it was unfair to expect people to have to accept cuts in what National Governments spend on goods and services we use and for them not to do the same.
I'm not a Tory but I have to say I agree completely with that especially when the spending is not and hasn't been accounted  for properly year on year for a very long time.
Last night in the vote on the proposition, just for one this once rebel Tories and the Labour party defeated the Government by 307 votes to 294 making it clear through our representatives what is is so many of us feel.
I only hope the message isn't lost on people involved in the European Union not least the Comissionaires.
Today Britons have spoken.

An end of an era

This isn't a a post I personally felt like making earlier on but actually with some some redacts I shall.
As many of you are aware I enjoy anime and manga reading much about it, buying magazines and spending money on it.
Here in the UK there is a very good 4 weekly magazine, NEO, published by Uncooked Media that has played a big role in popularizing anime and it's subcultures such as cosplaying as well as Asian culture.
Well from the moment I first saw it, I bought every issue and one of the things it had was  a website that offered more up to the minute news and a lively forum where people talked about things, contributed to threads that influenced the magazine covering  suggestions for content, reviews.
Coming from a close involvement with a forum with more drama than Shakespeare could come up, with it was a forum where I felt everyone gelled well together sharing their mutual interests even if complaints about a prominent magazine advertiser stocking counterfeit goods tended to be ignored time after time and anything critical regarding this disappearing.
Then at the beginning of this year, there was a bombshell as the Magazine and by extension its owner ditched the forum for a Facebook page as its sole means of communicating with it's readership with not even an announcement to forum members, dropping of any mention of it in side the magazine.
Because it relied as some forums do on manual authorizing of accounts for a period new members couldn't use it and because no one with administrator privileges was dealing with this, it was ripe for spamming.
Somewhat belatedly a person was given responsibility for looking after it but without making any personal comments the impression one forms is it isn't really their priority and attempts to allow involvement by long standing responsible members stalled for reasons I'm not going into.
The problem as anyone who knows about these things are, your core members drift off  - and many have - and with the problem around authorizing, moderating and banning spammers not really solved and looking very much that it won't be  is simple: Over time the forum dies off.
Now I have no issue with using differing media to interact with readers but a forum is a very different beast than a Facebook page with 'likes' and entries to just reply to and treating a community you created like that comes over as very shabby.
I shall be at Anime UK news under a new username. If you're at CR too you can message me there for it.

September musings

Wow! A warm dry late Summers day here that I spend a fair bit of my time out doors in due to my rotten internet service provider breaking up the broadband every 10 to 15 minutes and having momentary drop outs at all other times. England I'm sure must be home to some of the worst connections anywhere in the Western world so on top of everything else it sure doesn't surprise me some many do emigrate as the infrastructure is just so lousy here.

The major telephone provider is meant to moving toward high speed fibre broadband installation but I'll believe that'll come here when I see it!



You know I talked about the moral panic a few weeks back well we're at the start of another revolving around the case of an 16 year old boy who while left for a week to look after a four year old girl while his parents went away decide whilst leaving the four year old to her own devices to commit a bit of crime.

People are calling for the laws around the age children can be left on the own to changed and also the ages when older children can be left to look after younger siblings.

I really cannot understand this as the main thing is the person who is meant to look after the younger child has to be said to be mature (however we define that) which varies from child to child as well as tossing in the observation that in my experience some adults are insufficiently mature to be around children although they may give birth to them!

The benchmark is usually around from the age of 13 subject to your own assessment of your child which seems reasonable to me having looked after my older brother for periods when my folks weren't in.

This takes us to the universal requirement of children needing experience of handling responsibilities for themselves ready for when they become adults which as the adults we have to provide as we won't be around forever!!

Clearly this child has to reminded of the responsibility he undertook and how he let down his family, placing his young sibling in danger but I see little good from a Social Services investigation into the family.

Equal value?

When I actually woke up this morning I did have a completely different idea as to what this post was going to be about than the one I had been thinking about while at work for the last few days.
I suppose if there has been a recurring theme to my entries this your it's been for the most part one of hard topic entries, sometimes a bit controversial as life in Great Britain in 2011 is shaping up to be inspiration for going on the offensive with words.
Yesterday Tory MP, Philip Davies said something that shocked a good many people including many in his political party when he called for the Disabled particularly the Learning Disabled to be allowed to work for less than the national minimum wage if they wished to further the opportunities for them to gain a foothold in the world of employment. He went on to say "Those most disadvantaged by the national minimum wage are the most vulnerable in society".
Immediately there was an uproar namely around the idea that people who do equal work should be allowed to work for less because they need a job as the notion of worth being expressed in wages is a longstanding one familiar to any seeing the battles for equal pay for both men and women since the 1970's.
What I find so hard to really understand around this proposition is if we accept the notion of the disabled especially the Learning Disabled as being more vulnerable for developmental reasons to exploitation and abuse even, then allowing them to be offered to work for less does put them at risk. How likely is it someone with such as disability would question it and seek out support to be paid the same as others doing this work? It is quite possible they may be worse of financially for taking up a job offer with such low pay than if they had been on welfare.
Don't get me wrong preparation for work schemes like cafes where they may work as trainees are fine because they are learning but once a person has a skill then surely we all should be paid the least amount our society feels is appropriate for our labour.

Akwardness

It's funny isn't it every so often you'll bump into a similar situation to that that is illustrated whither or not it is so-called real life or in various boards or chat rooms.
Someone will stomp their feet and say "I was lied to" and not let up for ages making everyones life a misery and yet it may transpire they weren't really lied to so much as they swallowed uncritically a myth or someones joke as if it were for real even if it was kinda obvious it could never be so.
Equally others seem to take pleasure in accusing others of doing things they never did such as spreading rumours about them just because they're either feeling down in the dumps or lack self confidence and wish to pin it on something else.
It just leads to an awkwardness around a group that is just no fun to be with.

Help!

There are somethings that may be hard to do because of understandable restrictions about what you can say publicly but some aspects about my work do give me an insight into what other people are going through.
From my vantage point I see people experiencing problems with debt which sadly is very common place in the UK presently.
Many people think it's just people living the dream beyond their means but in my experience and that of my colleagues, it's not.
Generally speaking most we encounter are people who do think about meeting the repayments before taking on such long term commitments but often what is the problem is a sudden unforeseeable change in circumstances such as losing your job, a reduction in take home pay for those who are paid hourly or discovering you're pregnant.
For some consumer based debt problems can come from errors and delays on the parts of others such as problems with benefit or tax credit payments that may take several months to resolve or a notification that say their tax was miscalculated and they want more money off of them.
Consumer debt problems can be very serious when they concern what are called Utilities such as gas, electricity and water or not paying your rent, rates to your Council or tv license and I cannot emphasize enough the importance in seeking help the minute you see you may not be able to meet the payments.
I had a client recently what had lost their job because their employer had gone into administration and whose partner to which they were due to marry also was likely to made redundant within the month. Fancy a situation where both of you are out of work? Serious stuff, eh?
Well one of things we do is give people advice about what money they should get from their employer when they leave and if they are allowed any time off to look for new work. We also look at their situation and the person concerned we suggested they made a claim for benefits for being out of work as they needed money to live off even though we'd all hope they were able to get new work soon and should their partner also be out of work then the calculation for what both could get would alter. As well by that point if they needed any help with debts then we'd offer that although at the moment that looked okay.
So you see it's a bit different than people may say at the bus stop or in the popular press.