dale lane

We get three types of collection for rubbish at home – a bin for glass to get recycled, a bin for other recyclables like paper and plastics, and a general waste bin that goes to landfill.

We might soon be getting a fourth – for food waste from the kitchen. This is being trialled at the moment to work out the kinks in the system, but all going well, we should see it rolled out across Eastleigh soon.

This is pretty cool – I’ve got to admit that recycling is one of the things that Eastleigh Borough Council does well. They even started a recycling trial for batteries earlier this year, which sounded like a great idea.

Well done, Eastleigh 🙂

I got forwarded a little story in my email last night which I’ve just read. I don’t normally pass on stuff like this, because we all get enough junk, right? But I’m gonna make an exception this once because this one really made me stop and think.

Between running a charity, being a school governor, mentoring with On the Level, WMQ work, and a bunch of other bits and pieces, I am generally working on something most evenings and weekends. So, I guess it wouldn’t be a stretch to call me a bit of a workaholic. But, I figure that I’m busy, and have a lot to get done, so I work on. Anyway, with that as context, here’s the mail:

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Last month, Iain Duncan Smith proposed a bill which would allow for liability for suicide to be considered. Mr Smith’s argument is very well made and worth a read, but in brief, in cases where a series of repeated domestic abuse leads to someone feeling that their only option is to take their own life, then such a Bill could allow for the person responsible for the abuse to be considered liable for the suicide.

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We had a guest speaker at our Samaritans AGM tonight – Joe Ferns from General Office – who talked about suicide and depression in men. I’ve heard the statistic many times before that young men are more likely to die by suicide. I wasn’t aware that (although the overall number of suicides is slowly decreasing) the gap between number of suicides in men and women is widening – and has been for several decades. Joe gave an interesting perspective on some of the reasons behind this.

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I took Grace for a walk this morning, so that my wife could have a lie in. Was fun, but wow it’s cold!

This isn’t really something new that I learned today, but tonight did reinforce it for me so I thought it was worth mentioning.

Tonight was the Solent Youth Action Annual Awards Evening – our chance to reward the efforts of the volunteers that we support. In it, we try to recognise as many individuals as possible, while reflecting on the wide variety of activity that takes place over the year. And it was inspiring to see.

The evening was a mixture of entertainment, awards presentations and guest speeches. The entertainments were all demonstrations of some of the volunteering that young people have been doing, and I hope that we challenged a few preconceptions about ‘what is volunteering’ with these. For example, with the rock band of students from Mountbatten School. On the face of it, some might not see being in a band as volunteering, but musicians who play fundraising gigs to raise money for charity, provide free entertainment at charity and community events, and teach some of their skills to younger kids, are making a positive contribution to their community. This is volunteering.

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Went for a drink last night and the barman mentioned that Guinness is now brewed only in Dublin. Not sure I could really taste a difference, but I suppose it’s cute from a brand identity point of view?

Grace (my two-year old daughter) started in the “transition room” at nursery today – a room for slightly older toddlers.

One of the more interesting differences from the babies room is that each of the kids has a little credit-card-style card with their name and photo on. It’s used in a variety of ways – like doing the attendance register in the morning by getting the kids to hand in their card. Or at morning break, when the kids use the cards to “buy” their snack.

Grace loved her new card – she looked really proud of her little card with her face on. And she really got into the “shopping!” idea of needing it to get her snack. I can see how it’s a nice easy way to keep track of which kids have had theirs, and make sure that noone gets left out… but I cant help wondering if I should worry about how quickly my daughter is taking to the idea of credit cards? 🙂