The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England and Elizabethan England

The Time Travellers Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer (paperback Vintage, 2009)
Imagine you could travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see, and hear, and smell? Where would you stay? What are you going to eat? And how are you going to test to see if you are going down with the plague? History is not just about battles and dates, it is also about how our ancestors used to live, whether a peasant or a lord.

The Time Travellers Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer (hardback Bodley Head, 2012)

We typically think of the Elizabethan period in terms of Queen Elizabeth I as 'Gloriana', a golden age of maritime heroes, and of great writers but it is also a country in which life expectancy at birth is in the early thirties, people still starve to death and Catholics are persecuted for their faith. This book focuses on such questions as: If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 1590s, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory sit alongside the vagrants, diseases, violence, sexism and famine of the time?

These provide a fascinating look at social history.

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Age of Criminal Responsibility

Important changes in the brain's neural circuits go on well into a person's teens. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision-making, impulse control and cognitive control, is among the slowest parts of the brain to mature and is not fully developed until around the age of 20 (and possibly even later in some individuals). A young person's cognitive development continues into this later stage and their emotional maturity, self-image and judgement will be affected until the prefrontal cortex of the brain has fully developed. Alongside brain development, hormonal activity is also continuing well into the early twenties.

Child psychologists are being given a new directive (in 2016) which is that the age range they work with is increasing from 0-18 to 0-25. There are three stages of adolescence - early adolescence from 12-14 years, middle adolescence from 15-17 years and late adolescence from 18 years and over.

Motoring expert Quentin Willson says statistics show that at the age of 18 the vast majority of accidents caused by young drivers are down to bad judgement and decision making, and that behind the wheel "adult maturity isn't fully formed until you get past 25 for most cases of people". But rather than raise the minimum age for driving, Willson believes parents and teachers should impart safe driving skills before the effects of adolescence really kick in. He feels that "The government should look at this very carefully and put driving on the GCSE syllabus. So you teach kids to drive in terms of theory at school and all the right messages at 13, 14, 15, because when you get to 17 the testosterone is raging, all those corrosive influences are embedded."

In 2011, the Royal Society reported that the age of criminal responsibility in England, Wales and Northern Ireland could be "unreasonably low" given the emerging understanding of how slowly the brains of children mature, and that widespread differences between individuals also mean that the cut-off age at which children are deemed fit to stand trial, at 10 years old, might not be justifiable in all cases. (In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, a child is deemed fit to stand trial at the age of 10; in Scotland children cannot be convicted until they are 12. In most European countries it is far higher: 18 in Belgium and 16 in Spain)

What Works to Reduce Reoffending: A Summary of the Evidence.
Justice Analytical Services, Scottish Government [by] Dr. Maria Sapouna, Catherine Bisset and Anne-Marie Conlong. October 2011

• Long-term studies in both the UK and internationally show that offending begins in  early adolescence, peaks during the late teens and tapers off in young adulthood. Typically the peak age for offending is around 14 years, with a reduction by age 17 and another decrease by age 23. 
• A small number (about 5% of the offender population) "continue to offend throughout adulthood and are responsible for a disproportionally large number of offences. The relationship between age and offending is interpreted as reflecting underlying changes in biology, social contexts, attitudes and life circumstances that influence offenders’ motivation to desist from crime rather than a unitary maturation process". 
• Studies consistently find that "the occurrence of key life events such as obtaining and remaining in suitable employment, acquiring a stable partner and completing education degrees increase the likelihood of desistance from offending by adding structure to offenders’ lives and acting as a source of informal monitoring and emotional support. The same effect has been observed when offenders move away from criminal peers. More recently, researchers have stressed that the perceived strength, stability and quality of social attachments matter more than the events per se."
• Persistent young peopleoffenders are less committed to education and employment and most likely to have family members or peers also involved in crime. Persistent offending is often linked to drug addiction (particularly the need to fund a drug addiction).
• Scottish and English data suggest that community sentences are more effective in reducing recidivism than short-term prison sentences (less than 12 months).
• There is clear evidence from both Scotland and England that only a small proportion of offenders released on Home Detention Curfew (HDC) reoffend whilst on curfew.
• Findings from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime indicate that the deeper a youth is carried into the formal processing system, the less likely he/ she is to stop offending. The authors argue that the most significant factor in reducing offending is minimal formal intervention and maximum diversion to programming that does not have the trappings of criminal processing
• Positive effects on reoffending have also been reported in the evaluation of the Triage initiative (being piloted in England and Wales in 2011), which diverts young people who have offended for the first time under police custody to support services provided by a youth worker and, where appropriate, restorative justice informed interventions.
• Scotland’s Choice (2008) reported that: prisoners are 13 times more likely to have been in care as a child; 63% of young people have substance misuse issues on admission to prison; of all prisoners 80% have writing, 65% have numeracy; and 50% have reading skills of an 11 year old; and 25% of these young people have clinically significant communication impairment.
• There is strong evidence that provision of practical support in prison is unlikely to have a lasting impact on the risk of reoffending unless it continues upon release. Aftercare should, therefore, form part of a comprehensive intervention package. It is also important that the services provided are appropriately sequenced: for example, employment, while critical in the longer term, is often not a realistic short-term goal until other issues and needs have been addressed. 
• What does not work: short term non-residential employment interventions, summer work programmes, diversion from court to job training for young people, arrest for minor offences, increased arrests on drug dealing locations, ‘boot’ camps or ‘scared straight’ programmes (taking young people who offend to adult prisons), ‘shock’ probation, parole or sentencing, home detention and electronic monitoring, and vague unstructured rehabilitation programmes.

Various sources

Moral Minds

Moral Minds: how nature designed our universal sense of right and wrong by Marc. D. Hauser. Little, Brown, 2006.

Quite a challenging read as it describes in detail a large number of scentific studies, which help our understanding of innate and learnt human behaviour.

Hunter-gatherer societies, typically but not always nomadic and without food storage capacity, are largely egalitarian, with collaborative decision making. Availability of large game is unpredictable, which leads to food sharing. Humans have an innate sense of fairness. An income-distribution study found that when people freely chose to allow inequalities, while taking care of the most in need does not reduce incentives to work hard, nor create a large number of free-loaders who suck the welfaresystem dry. When the same regime is imposed, more cheat and put in less effort because they perceive redistribution through taxes as a right.

While all societies have a sense of fairness, each culture sets the allowable responses to specific situations. Formal laws sometimes override our sense of fairness. Legal policies have to establish why particualr principles are justified, and what happens to those who violate them. Punishment is one answer. If the public does not have faith in the legal system, some individuals will exact punishment instead of, or in addition to, the official one.

Variations of the classic 'trolley problem' (a train will hit and kill 5 hikers on the track if it stays on course, but a bystander can pull a lever divert the train onto another track where it will kill only one person) show that it is permissible to pull the lever and kill one if the intent is to save 5 people and none of the six are known to the bystander; when information about identity is known, kin will be saved over non-kin, friends over strangers, humans over non-humans and politically safe or neutral individuals over politically abhorrent persons. There is no evidence that gender, age or national affiliation affects the judgement.

Men are responsible for a disproportionately large number of homicides, and of these, most are young men between the ages of 15 and 30. [cf New research indicates that the human brain, and in particular the capacity for self control, do not reach maturity until the late teens or early twenties.] The best predictor of violence is the number of unmarried young men; societies that practise polygamy are the most vulnerable to such violence as some men have many spouses, leaving others with none.

Culture-of-honour psychology is a problem, and can have awful, often fatal,  consequences for women. Those in power see specific behaviour as immoral and proscribe punishments intended to shame the victim and exonerate the murderer and his family; most occur in public and are supported by local culture.

Throughout history and in all the world's cultures, there are statements of various versions of the Golden Rule. However, selfish instincts can override this.

• Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
• Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving kindness: do not do unto others what you not have them do unto you.
• Taoism: Regard your neighbour's gain as your own gain and your neighbour's loss as your own loss. 
• Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow men. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.
• Christianity: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even unto them; for this is the Law and the Prophets.
• Islam: Not one of you is a believer unless he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.

While equating morality with religion is common, it is wrong. It falsely assumes that people without religious faith lack an understanding of rights andwrogs, and that people of religious faith are more virtuous than atheists and agnostics. Across a range of moral dilemmas and testing situations, people of various faiths and atheists and agnostics will deliver the same judgements.

The moral intuitions that drive many of our judgements often conflict with guidelines set out by law, religion or both. This has lead recently to battles over euthenasia and abortion. Governments can shoose whether to spend thousands of pounds on continued support for a patient in a vegetative state or spend the money on treatments that will benefit many people or on famine relief programmes.

Hauser concludes that we do have an inbuilt universal moral capacity, that develops over time, but is partially culturally determined. We share a universal moral grammar and at birth could have acquired any of the world's moral systems.

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Dashcams

The insurance industry is taking dashcams seriously, with viseo footage now being accepted as evidence in claims. Some firms offer discounts on conver to dashcam users.

Good Housekeeping testing recommended the following in 2016.

• Overall winner RAC 05 Super HD Car Cam (£149.99). Clear, sharp footage day and night. # Lane diversion warnings alert the driver if they wander from their lane. # With a 2.7 inch display, positioning the camera is easy. # Screen can be switched off for safety.
• Runner up Transcend DrivePro 220 (£123 at Halfords). Easy to set up, with a 2.4 inch screen. # Alert system lets you know if you are too close to the car in front or veer out of your lane. # Built in Wifi means you can connect it to view on a smartphone via an app. # Image adequate but not as sharp as winner. 
• Screenless RoadHawk HD-2 (£249.95). Clear sharp footage day and night. # Straightforward to use. # Lack of screen makes is fiddly to position correctly.

Feature in Good Housekeeping, July 2016

Eco Tips in Garage, Workshop, Shed and Garden

Garages, workshops, sheds and gardens are areas we may not usually think about when trying to go eco - but there are still things we can do.

• Turn off any power tools on charge.
• Recycle left over paint.
• Keep plant pots from garden centre purchases to re-use when growing your own plants.
• Cardboard middles from toilet rolls are useful mini-plant pots for seedlings.

Various sources.

Labelling Luggage

Thieves have been known to hang around airports to check on which houses will be unoccupied, so take precautions.

• On the outbound leg of a journey, put your hotel or accommodation details on the luggage label, or write your mobile number on the inside of your case.
• On the return leg, an airline will have your a record of your home address.

Source: Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA)

Proposed Student Funding Wales 2018-2019

Following the review led by Prof. Sir Ian Diamond, it is proposed to change the funding of university students in Wales in the academic year 2018-1019.

The tuition fee grant of £5,100 will be scrapped and course fees will be paid back with a loan which students will repay once they have graduated and started earning more than £21,000.

All students will get £1,000 a year plus a means-tested grant of up to £8,113 a year to help with living costs.

• Family income less than £18,370 would qualify for the maximum grant.
• Family income over £59,200 now (not the £80,000 proposed by the Diamond review) will only be eligible for the basic £1,000. These students will need to apply for loans to support their living costs.
• Full-time, part-time and post-graduate study would be considered equally and would have access to similar support

It is estimated that:

• Around a third of students would be entitled to the full grant.
• A student from a family on average income could receive around £7,000 a year.
• Less than a third will get the minimum of £1,000. 

Prof Diamond, vice-chancellor of the University of Aberdeen, said it would mean students from Wales would face a "significantly lower average level of debt on leaving university than those from England."


Source: BBC News website, 22 Nov. 2016 [Read in full.]

Fermented Foods

Foods that contain live microbes that can augment the bacteria in your gut may be why Japanese and Koreans live longer than we do.

Fermented foods include naturally produced cheeses, full-fat plain yoghurt. Also tofu, sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi and tempeh; make sure they are produced naturally rather than pickled in vinegar.

Various sources

UK Black Population Facts 2016

While black people have been part of the UK population for several centuries, there are still issues around their full assimilation into the wider population.

In 2016:

45% of black children grow up in poverty, but just 25% of white children do.

White children are more likely to get 3 A level passes and more likely to get offered places at top universities with the same predicted grades.

There are no black judges sitting in the British Supreme Court or High Court; there are no black generals in the British Army.

While 4% of the population is black, only 2% of MPs are black.

Source: Figures quoted in reviews of a BBC TV programme in Nov/Dec 2016

Eco Tips for the Whole House

Here are some general tips.

• Turn heating thermostat down by one degree.
• Fit thermostatic valves on radiators.
• Don't heat rooms you are not using.
• Fit electricity saving light bulbs.
• Turn lights off when you leave a room unless other people are still there.
• Organise plugs so it is easier to switch things off at the wall socket.
• Use strip plugs and multiway adaptors with individual switches.
• Switch to a green energy supplier.
• Recycle anything you can.
• Re-use anything you can.
• Donate or sell unwanted items rather than put in refuse collection for landfill. 
• Fix any leaking taps.
• Buy recycled products when you can.

Various sources

Eco Tips in the Utility Room

Utility rooms or areas are increasingly common as areas for domestic appliances.

• Only run dishwasher on full load.
• Only run washing machine on full load.
• Don't wash clean clothes - many items can be worn a few times before needing washing.
• Use environmentally friendly washing powders and dishwasher tablets.
• Dry clothes outside or on an inside line rather than using a tumble dryer.

Various sources.

Self Learning Children in India

In many rural villages in India most children go to school but learn relatively little. Deep education inequalities persist, especially in the quality of education. The 2014 Annual Status of Education Report shows that almost a third of rural children aged six to eight in India cannot even recognise letters yet.

The Hybrid Learning Program was developed by Madhav Chavan and Rukmini Banerji of Pratham, one of India's largest non-profit organisations working in the education sector. Tablets without an internet connection were preloaded with a wide range of locally relevant content and given out in 400 villages with a reasonable number of pupils who could read. Village members were required to do two things - have children who will organise themselves into groups of five, and have an adult responsible for charging the tablet computers every night.

Worried that children would use the tablets for playing and having fun rather than focusing on the preloaded educational content, the team put passwords on the tablets that only allowed access to to the Pratham content. But the team soon discovered that playing and having fun was exactly the point.
The children quickly found a way to hack the system and bypass the passwords and in no time at all over 50% of all the tablets no longer were password protected. Children were doing a wide range of things. They were very interested in Pratham's educational content and they were also busy making their own - videos, songs, downloads perhaps from visitors' phones or computers via file sharing.

Closing the gap in essential academic skills is important but to really leapfrog forward, marginalised children need the opportunities to develop a much broader set of skills, including "learning how to learn". Digital fluency and academic mastery are important, but secondary to the ability to learn new things, use strategies to tackle a new problem, seek help, find solutions. In traditional schools students are so conditioned to have teachers give them the answer that it is a fundamental shift for them to approach learning in this new way. The hardest part of implementing the programme has been training Pratham staff not to give children the answers or fix problems, but to let children figure things out on their own. A mindset shift not only for the children but also the adults.

In the first three months of playing with the tablets there has been, according to the project's monitoring data, an 11% increase in pupils' core academic skills such as reading in children's mother tongue, reading and speaking in English, and science.

Source: Indian children invent their own lessons by Rebecca Winthrop, BBC News website, 16 Nov. 2016 [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37618901].

Gender Predominance and Violence

Research at the University of Utah analysed the effect of men/women ratio on crime rates in 3,082 US counties using census and crime data from 2010. The study focused on men and women of reproductive age and five types of crime: murders, assaults, rapes, sex-offences and prostitution.

"For all types of offence analysed, rising proportions of men correlated with fewer crimes - even when accounting for other potential contributing factors such as poverty."

It seems that when there are fewer women, men see them as a more valuable resource - and their behaviour becomes more 'dutiful' to win and keep a female partner. When there are many women, men adopt promiscuous behaviour, which in turn brings them into conflict with other men.

Animal studies show similar patterns. "When females are abundant and males rare, males are more violently competitive, more promiscuous and less likely to invest in offspring."

Studies at the Univestity of Texas show that when women outnumber men, there are more short-term relationships, higher divorce rates and increased reluctance to commit to one partner.

These studies have implications for crime prevention. Current policies aimed at reducing violence and crime by reducing the proportion of men in male-dominated areas may backfire.

Source: Men get violent if women are aplenty by Andy Coghlan in New Scientist, 8 Oct. 2016