Let's Not, After All, Because It's Too Hard...

Schools also know that enforcing such a ban is anything but straightforward. In February, research by Birmingham University found that staff at English schools with “restrictive” smartphone policies – those that require pupils to turn phones off and place them in a bag or hand devices in – spent more than 100 hours a week enforcing those rules. That’s the equivalent of a week’s working hours for three full-time members of staff. Researchers concluded that at a potential cost of £94 per pupil, enforcement was a “huge drain” on already stretched resources. The question then is, will the government increase school funding considering this reality?

This is the mad idea, beloved of authoritarian nut jobs everywhere that smartphones should be banned in school. And having suggested that, its ‘job done, trebles all round’ and onto the next idea, but it seems enforcing that is going to be quite the task. Not that that's their concern, after all.

The problem of enforcement will not magically disappear. Some teachers, too scared or tired of the disruption that will come when they ask for a pupil’s phone, will continue to “tactically ignore” the ping of WhatsApp notifications.

Well, that’s a disciplinary then, isn’t it? Punish all the teachers for the infraction of one, you know it makes sense, eh? 

A head of year working at a school with a “restrictive” smartphone policy told me of the typical reactions of pupils caught with their phones: “denial and resistance”, “verbal abuse” and “serious hostility”. They spoke of one colleague who was forced to “lock themselves in their office” when confronted by a raging student demanding the return of their phone.

Then there were the students who carried multiple phones so that when challenged by a teacher, they could offer up a decoy and appear compliant with school rules.

They've allowed the children to dictate to the adults for so long that this cannot get off the ground. And you can’t rely on the parents, who are often every bit as violent and ignorant as their spawn.

In another school, an assistant head recently told me that a parent, furious at the school’s confiscation of their child’s mobile, called the police.

And it’s all for nothing anyway: 

While schools can curb the use of phones during the day, they are powerless to enforce those boundaries beyond the school gates. Pupils compensate for their daytime sobriety with heavier phone use at home.

It is to laugh… 

Singapore Knows How To Deal With Youths In The Digital Age

A French teenager who allegedly licked a straw from an orange juice vending machine and put it back into its dispenser has been charged with committing mischief and being a public nuisance in Singapore.

Why? For Tiktok 'Likes' of course.

The company that owns the vending machine, iJooz, says it replaced all 500 straws in the machine's dispenser after the alleged incident.

And they aren't prpared to swallow that cost and laugh it off as they would in the West...

If found guilty of both charges Maximilien faces a maximum jail sentence of more than two years and thousands of dollars in fines.

I visited Singapore on holiday many years ago, and found it clean and safe like the UK used to be.

Maximilien is currently a student at the Singapore branch of the Essec Business School.

His lawyers had earlier told CNA that Maximilien's parents had flown over to Singapore and that a representative from his school would be his bailor. His case will be heard again in court on 22 May.

I hope he learned more about business than he evidently did about the culture of the country he was staying in. 

A Reminder...

...of what the local elections should have been all about, courtsey of Matt

Sunday Funnies...

 Spoilers! 

Well, At Least It’s Not The Krays…

A midnight phone call from a High Street crime gang, threatening to kill crime investigator Mandy and burn her house down, was just the start of a campaign of intimidation that would eventually force her and her husband to move home. She faced escalating threats from a Kurdish crime gang, that had been selling illegal cigarettes and nitrous oxide canisters in mini-marts across the UK.

And why do we have Kurdish organised crime in the UK? It’s a good question, isn’t it, Reader? Clearly, our own homegrown OCGs aren’t considered exotic and enriching enough…

Mandy is one of 24 Trading Standards officers who have shared details of the daily intimidation and violence they face from criminal gangs running mini-marts and vape shops, as they try to investigate unfair trading, illegal business activity and enforce consumer protection laws.

In some areas, half of all mini-marts and vape shops, and up to a third of American candy stores are thought to have links to organised crime, the survey results also suggest.

I think that’s what you call a ‘conservative estimate’! 

The UK government told us it was "working with the police, the National Crime Agency and Trading Standards to take the strongest possible action against these criminal businesses".

Oh, good, I feel much safer now the UK Government is stepping up… knowing it’s probably infiltrated by their friends.

Sorry Ted, You're A DInosaur!

Hundreds of rogue police officers face the sack after Scotland Yard used an artificial intelligence spy program to unearth misconduct, corruption and criminality.

Oh, dear...

In an unprecedented crackdown, Britain's biggest force secretly unleashed the AI tool to root out bad behaviour - letting it loose on internal systems which monitor sickness levels, overtime, expenses, entry to buildings and public complaints. The controversial tool was supplied by the US tech company Palantir, which also works for the Israeli military and Donald Trump's ICE operation.

Now unleash it on the benefits system!  

Senior officers had been abusing Met systems for years, logging false claims for overtime, scamming systems to get extra days off, lying about working from home and hiding their membership of the Freemasons.

Their union is furious!  

But the move has angered the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers. It called the approach 'automated suspicion', saying: 'Officers must not be subjected to opaque or untested tools that risk misinterpreting unsustainable workload pressures, sickness or overtime as indicators of wrongdoing.'

Good luck with that!  

The Modern Day Scourge Of The 'Influencer'

An influencer has been charged after allegedly headbutting a charity worker who refused to let him film himself handing food to the homeless. The incident, which happened at Homeless Project Scotland's Glassford Street shelter on Thursday just after 11pm, saw an influencer allegedly turn violent after his request for a photo opportunity was refused.

These young folk, with their TikToks, eh?  

A 49-year-old man was arrested at the scene at 11.38pm and then charged in connection to the alleged incident. He will appear in court at a later date.

Isn't that a bit old to be an influencer?  

It is not known who the 49-year-old influencer is, but it is understood that he was staying at the House of Gods Hotel in Glasgow, where rooms start from about £150 per night. The charity claimed that House of Gods hotel staff attended the scene and asked their guest to return.

Wow, that's good hotel service if it includes negotiating a way out of chokey for you!  

The Morning After…

Well, as I write this, it’s 5:15am, I'm just sipping my morning cuppa, and enough of the results are in that we know that, as predicted, Labour have suffered crushing defeat in their traditional heartlands, and Starmer’s political career is now measured in days, if not hours.

 TGIF! 

It's not all good news (it never is), the Green Party looks to have picked up too many seats for my liking, and what replaces Starmer is poroably even worse. 

Update: sadly, my area remaind solidly Labour despite (or perhaps because of?) the huge demographic change it's endured over the recent years?

It's D-Day!

Local elections, and a chance for people to cast a vote to give the people in charge a good kicking. but don't forget! 

Don't draw a cock on your ballot paper - last time, one got into No 10!

And never, ever vote Green!

My polling station is just two streets over, a short walk away so passport in hand I'll take a stroll on this, the last day of my impromptu holiday, and do my civic duty.

Update: A much longer walk than I’d thought - my local one is usually in a school, but the schools are all open, so it had been switched to a church hall several streets away. And to rub it in, on the walk there I passed another polling station in a community hall, much nearer! And inevitably, not the usual polling station means not the usual polling staff, three black women, and when I gave my address the one operating the iPad said she couldn’t find it, until I leaned over and pointed it out on the sheet of streets on the desk in front of her!

Losing Their Long Time Allies...

Migrant workers and the UK’s largest union will carry out a mass leafleting campaign in Shabana Mahmood’s Birmingham constituency to protest against a planned change in immigration policy. The Labour-affiliated Unison union says the changes will adversely affect migrant care workers. About one-third of all care workers and one-fifth of all NHS workers are migrants.

Real migrants, I'd hope, not the modern use of that term. 

Union members hope to leaflet about one-third of the home secretary’s approximately 55,000 constituents in the Ladywood area of the city. Union sources say it is the first time such a large Labour-affiliated union is lobbying en masse against a key party policy.

When even the unions are fed up with you, you know it's all over... 

Although the earned settlement proposals, which have been outlined in a white paper, call for a doubling of settlement time to 10 years, in some cases migrants may have to wait longer than that if they entered the UK illegally or have claimed benefits here.

If they entered the coutry illegally, they should be deported!  

The union is also calling for a change to sponsorship rules for these visas. At the moment, these workers must be sponsored by their employer, which officials say can lead to exploitation. There are calls for this to be replaced with a sponsorship scheme managed by a public-sector body.

Ah, that's the union's real goal - jobs for the public sector boys.