Thursday, September 6, 2007
As a retailer of climbing frames and other play structures to the UK market I sometimes get asked if planning permission is needed for putting a play structure in the garden.
The answer to this is 'generally no'. I have yet to come across anyone who has bought a play structure from my web sites and has needed planning permission. These are regarded as temporary structures and there is normally no problem.
However, if you live in a part of the country which is a conservation area, or there are covenants or restrictions in your lease or deeds then these may affect whether you can put up your play structure.
This sort of thing is rare and only you will know if you are affected by anything like this. If you are in any doubt then a quick word with your local planning department should clear up any worries.
Generally, as long as your play structure is going in your back garden, and not inconveniencing your neighbours in any way then there should be no problems.
Obviously, don't even think about putting your play structure in your front garden, as you will definitely need planning permission for that !
So, where is the best place to position your play structure in terms of safety ?
A lot of people want to place their play structure on play bark to provide a safe cushioned surface, and this is a great idea, but it isan expensive option and is really not necessary. If you are buying a climbing frame or other play structure then make sure you look out for one that can be placed on grass.
When measuring up or positioning your play structure make sure that you allow at least 3ft (preferably 6ft) of free space around the play structure. Bear in mind that your children need to walk around the play structure and get access to the various parts of it. If your play structure includes a swing then take into account the amount of space that you are likely to need for a child to be using the swing while another walks in front of, or behind, the swing.
Are there any dangers in your garden which you need to avoid ?
You want to make sure that your play structure is not positioned on top of or near a concrete path. If your child was to fall then you want to make sure they are going to land on grass, not concrete !
Make sure that some of the other less obvious hazards are avoided, such as washing lines, and sheds.
So what about actually installing your play structure ?
Depending on the make and model of the play structure it may need to be concreted into the ground. Some models are designed to have extra length in the frame so that this extra length can be buried in the ground. With these models, burying the extra length is essential, and concreting them into place is optional, but recommended.
The other method of securing your climbing frame or play structure in place is to use metal pegs. These will be attached to the play structure at one end, and the other end can either be buried in the ground or a small amount of concrete can be used to secure it in place.
These are just some of the many considerations that you need to take into account when choosing your kids climbing frame or play structure. If you would like more advice then this is available in the form of a free report from the Climbing Frames Etc. web site.
Chris O'Connor is the owner of a web site selling climbing frames and outdoor
play equipment within the UK.
Climbing Frames. - http://www.climbing-frames-etc.co.uk
Marriage, Children and Divorce: When
It can happen in many ways. Sometimes, suddenly, out of the blue, with no warning whatsoever. Other times, the music slowly, gradually, fades to a deafening silence.
Divorce is the great plague on American families today. More than 40% of adults under 40 are children of divorced parents. The U.S. now has the highest divorce rate (roughly 44%) of the Western nations, though it's slightly declining. Avoiding it, preparing for it and dealing with the consequences of when the music stops involve millions of us every day.
Here in France, where the "use" of a lover is accepted and frequent, the current divorce rate is 39%, having more than tripled since 1970. The trend is alarming. Even the French find their own institution of marriage "moins formidable" than before.
Sitting in this near-empty café, I'm struck how the odds those lovers smooching on the Seine might marry, but then divorce, has shot up like my blood pressure now, thanks to my less-than-attentive waiter. Infidelity, financial strains, sexual problems, parenting differences, poor anger management, career incompatibility and, of course, the catch-all "irreconcilable differences," cause marriages to dissolve and families to suffer.
Perhaps the pain becomes too great. Or the notion things are hopeless and won't change, or it will take too long and be too much work cause couples to pull the plug, give up. Hopelessness is a powerful force, robbing us of energy and initiative.
Of course, the stressful consequences of divorce can be devastating emotionally, financially and on any children. How parents inform their children and negotiate future parenting responsibilities affect how children will react to the news.
It's best to tell your children together, simply, honestly and directly. Don't go into detail about why or bash your spouse. It's okay to reveal your sadness, while allowing them to also show their feelings. If you're separating and not sure about divorce, don't make predictions or promises you can't keep. Try to keep things as consistent as possible.
Let your children know they're not responsible, that nothing they've done is causing the separation, and they can't do anything to make you get back together. Do not use your children as communication go-betweens. Assure them you both love them and will continue to take care of them.
Most people entering marriage expect it to last. Success worth having is worth fighting for...through both the exhilarating highs and mind-numbing lows.
Barring physical abuse, couples can repair and improve their marriages. I've seen 'em do it countless times in San Diego marriage counseling. Sometimes it's quicker and easier than expected. Sometimes it takes time.
Well, the music between my now-empty café waiter and me has dropped to one decibel. Clearly, he has more important things to do than attend to beaucoup-euros-paying little ol' me. I consider divorcing him (C'est la vie, c'est la guerre), but decide to give it another shot. Monsieur!...pardon, monsieur!
Okay, I've had enough. The music's died. I'm leaving. Hey, bud, Happy Bastille Day! Wait! Mon Dieu, he's coming over! I hear music.
Before you bid adieu to your duet, consider the assistance of an experienced, well-regarded marriage counselor.
For more information:
Marriage Counseling - San Diego County
Advance Counseling - Denver/Boulder
Dr. Marshall Colt is Executive Director of Advance Counseling, LLC in San Diego, serving clients since 1994. Licensed in California, Colorado and Florida, Dr. Colt has been in private practice for over 11 years, working with a variety of people dealing with the challenges of adolescence and adult life. See: http://www.advance-counseling.com
Mafia Influence on TSO, A Popular Kids Video Game
If I told you this, would you believe me? Try doing so, because it's the truth. And also, in this strange and perverse world, young men and women are busy killing each other at an alarming rate. Do we really need something like a pseudo Mafia causing the same sorts of problems? Gangsterism, in other words, on our children's beloved video games?
According to Wikipedia, the Web's foremost online encyclopedia, ever since 9/11 the FBI hasn't had much in time or resources to handle organized crime, and there has been a sudden resurgence in its activities.
Right now, the online game "The Sims Online"-- which is labeled a "T for
Teens" game -- has been overrun by several obviously Mafia named "families." These people don't seem to have enough imagination to be Mexican Mafia, Chinese Mafia or Japanese Mafia (yet), which also exist in real life. They are very aggressive and very obvious.
Whether or not they are the real Mafia is a question which I cannot answer. They may be a bunch of "errant" teenage boys and girls – but ones with some very eclectic adult tastes and also many violent and weird high tech tendencies. You should see the Playboy style icons they paste on top of their houses from certain views of the TSO video game.
I can't tell who's to blame for that, adults or kids. And that sort of thing is not something you can ordinarily get as a regular player of that particular video game. Something is up with that, something way too mysterious.
And one thing these kids, if they are kids, really do, even though it is to virtual and not real houses: they trash people's paid-for beautiful properties. The kind of properties that people would like to build, taking a lifetime to achieve. Beautiful, sprawling mansions you can't own in real life, the kind that are totally out of reach for the vast majority of people.
Some people have been playing The Sims Online for years. Maybe you think they're weird, maybe you think they're no one to feel sorry for. Maybe you're even rooting for the "pseudo Mafia." But not me. I had real friends going on that game, and slowly but surely "they" began destroying our Sims houses, and all of our prized possessions on that game. To the point where no one could tell if it was part of the game, or something far worse.
I happen to have another friend (an entirely different situation) who was screwed over for $15,000 real life dollars when he tried to sell some photographs and they were more or less taken from him. Is that a good thing to do to someone? And is it a good thing to interrupt some high tech "decent" game involving minor adult activity and corrupt it still further? So far as I can tell, some money is going out that way on TSO too—in real life.
I am so tired, I don't know. Values are very hard to gauge in life, anyway.
To "green up" on The Sims Online at all, or to keep your simulated character going, it forces you to do interactions that are rather similar to having sex with animals (wrestle with your dog, but you should see what it looks like if you really see it) and that's bad enough, but rather bearable. Sigmund Freud would have told us that such behavior is relatively normal, that having an "orgy session" involving "heavy petting" with your own puppy where it loves you and licks your face and you are all over each other, is fun. Also, there is sexy dancing, heavy kissing and hugging, and so forth, which works for most people -- including twelve year old kids. This is done with your fellow "characters," real life people in the game whom you can become acquainted with, work with, and even "marry." The marriages are not legal of course, and tend to dissolve fairly quickly.
It is not fun, however, to come home one day to having your hard won, worked for skills, games, store or money house trashed by unknown people -- while your town is crawling with "De Corleoni Territori," the "Italian Mafia Empire," "The Vito Family Territory" and so forth. I am not talking Anti-Italian Defamation. I had several Italian friends on the game, whom I now am stuck missing in my daily life. I am talking about a bunch of people either acting like the Mafia, or worse yet, actually being connected with them somehow and taking over a children's video game. Possibly, several children's video games. Or were they involved in the first place, and is Maxis a Mafia held game company? Look at the names.
Maxis, Mafia. Why doesn't Entertainment Arts do something about the house trashing problem, for example, even though people have repeatedly complained about it? What is it exactly that they are trying to hide? Apparently not much; you can easily find "the Mob" everywhere on that game. And their version of "the cops" does absolutely nothing at all.
It is true the game is labeled "T for Teens" and is connected with what looks like some harmless fake gambling. The money being exchanged seems to be Simoleans at first. Fake money, which you get by working at odd jobs on the game, and you may also acquire skills so you can make more of the fake money. But there are "payoffs," and you can also buy blocks of the money on EBay, roughly $15-25 for 1 million Simoleans. And you can buy "rares," which people barter and pay for, such as Mystic Trees, tigers and cheetahs. Makes it looks like you're not spending money, like the gambling is harmless.
But is this what you want your teenager to be doing? For 6-10 hours a day, five-seven days a week? Eventually, obviously, after I spent about a month on the game, it was so that the money was swiftly turning real.
Okay, video addiction is bad enough, but we're talking about Organized Crime here as well. Remember a little place called Columbine High School? What if there's some sort of eerie connection to that sort of business? I had to join this game to find out, kind of as a lark, but I did some real exploring too.
And the Mafia is in and roughly controlling every town that I've visited on The Sims Online, and I've reasonably checked them all over. Dan's Grove, Jolly Pines, Blazing Falls, Alphaville. The Mafia is…everywhere.
I have talked to these "Mafia" gentlemen and ladies, and visited their houses. They don't have very much to do at them but the usual Sims stuff. I'm afraid they have discovered game "cheats" and, being bored, are using them to destroy other game players' properties. And yes, I have evidence, not hard unfortunately, that they have watched people play the game from a distance. One of them knew about something he shouldn't have known. And another friend of mine who regularly plays video games has noticed these tendencies toward having strange "game powers" that other players don't have in yet other video games. He says it's pretty common. Hackers, he calls it, but in the TSO case, it's hitting a little too close to home.
For example, a gay bashing was set up right in front of me. I rode it out, but I had to comfort the "gay" being bashed. Of course, it was his simulated character, not "he" who was hurt. TSO is real people playing games. I'm not gay, but it was getting a little peculiar that such stuff is allowable on a "T for Teens" video game. I was more than a little confused.
A "lady" in fun fired a game Civil War cannon at me, in private, and this Mafia guy named "Riccardo" knew that it had happened. I don't think she told him about it. How did he know? She did it just for laughs, and it was a harmless game event (I peed my pants as the game character, and it seemed okay), but it's not very funny that he knew about it. I didn't exactly care, and it was sort of humorous. He couldn't have known about it unless he'd seen it happen, in all probability. And he wasn't anywhere on the property or onscreen at the time. He had a private view of it going on.
The same Mafia dude, who kept denying he was Mafia -- while dressed in an obvious game-style Mafia suit and with the name "Riccardo" -- also told me you can't trash houses unless you're a roommate or the home owner. This should indeed be the case; it involves "building permissions." But one of the house trashing victims had no roommates whatsoever. And she wasn't motivated to trash her house…no insurance money is involved.
Game players on this game can be quite friendly. I made a lot of good friends doing things like making pizzas, opening up my own skills house business, doing minor gambling (legal for adults and I'm over 40) and in general -- partying. You can play high tech, beautiful looking musical instruments and feel like you're there. It's a great game. You should see some of the wild and crazy characters on this game! Or should you?
Except that I can't play it anymore. I quit the game solely because of the
extremely heavy Mafia presence that was starting to visit my house and breathe hotly down my neck. That, and the game was cutting into my work routine as a full-time writer quite a little bit, too.
First, "Riccardo" showed up. Out of nowhere, after I had used the Maxis device to screen all apparent "Mafia" members out of my "house." He showed up at my house. The same day my friend's house was trashed. It was the second such trashing since I had started playing there. Obvious Mafia guy, obviously scouting me. Denied everything completely. This was after two of my friends' houses had been trashed.
Want to know anything about terrorism? Now I know what it is. A little too thoroughly for my tastes. The Mob was making it obvious that I could be next. Why is that exactly? And what sort of "next" would it be—real, or simulated game activity? These people looked capable of tracking down my actual computer's IP address, my ISP and finally my real life house.
"Yeah, they're just a bunch of teenagers who like to trash houses…" "They're not the real Mafia, they're just kids." I heard a lot of that from people both on and off the game, even my fellow writers. Harmless kids.
Like the ones at Columbine?
Boredom with what the Sims had to offer, or a lack of desire to wait for the further events? We had chat rooms going, and Eminem (might be the real one from rap music, somebody on the game claimed it actually is that very real rapper dude—who knows) was there, helping to build a SimBall stadium. So people could play SimBall on the game. Some guy called Eminem, and he wanted to build us a ball stadium. What if the pseudo "Mafia" decides to trash that, too? "Em" there might have been trying to do something real and good for a change. Dunno. And I heard about a man's house also being trashed, so it's obvious they don't do it "just to women."
And all I could do was flee. I quit playing the game for good. I don't feel much "like a man" after that. I feel rather like an inebriated cipher.
Parents, watch the video games your teenagers are playing. You might turn around and suddenly find you have a genuine Neo Mafia member for a teenage daughter or son, in your Real Life. I know that now. You might think I'm crazy, but I'm not. A man told me recently he's been finding kids that stay all day on those games. I'm not the only "nutty" parent here who's getting worried. I think something like Columbine could swallow our kids alive, alarmist as that may sound, through video games.
The Sims Online is conceivably the haven for a slinking beast with no better name than the Neo Mafia: "My New Family." And for the last time, if you're Italian, I am not picking on you. I'm worried about you instead. And do you need to be affiliated with these mysterious strangers, who maybe think all organized crime is still from Italy? Are you, like me, a parent? Ma fia? Neo ma fia? Oy gevaldt, as the Jews say, on such a New Family.
Yes, parents, that is what it means in Italian-American. My new family.
Still feel comfortable with the concept?
Those guys were lying to me. If so, then they are Neo Mafia. What would that mean exactly? What exactly would it mean, if they have the technology to get past the defenses in the game and tear people's houses down? I was told by several people, even "Riccardo," that it's not easy to do that.
"Trust me. I'm only Italian. I'm not a Mafia member. You must be a bigot. It's because my skin is brown. Yadayadayaday." You can be whatever skin color you want to be on TSO, and either sex for that matter. Everybody kept going, "It's only kids, calm down, it's only kids." Yeah, pretty old kids.
First town on The Sims map: Dan's Grove. First thing you see when you enter there: Italian Mafia Empire. It was a little hidden, but not very. Sort of to the South. It's obviously their beachhead, the place they originally hit.
Then they simply moved out from there. And they can hide. When you go there, to Dan's Grove, you don't find very many Mafia. They seemingly moved out from there. Trouble is, they can move right back there at lightning speed. That's not doable by any regular game player without having more than one paid account on the game. How many paid accounts do these guys have? Dan's Grove seems to be the seat of the Hidden Mafia Empire, altogether. Sounds exciting in a way, I guess, but no fun.
That's where they trashed the two or three "houses." Or…whatever. Yes dear, it's all twelve year old kids. And my name is Uncle Auntie Em. Maybe I was a fool for ever playing it. I assumed it was just a game, and someone was being silly.
I was wrong. That game smells to the skies of actual real life payoffs, and everyone I talked to really seemed to know that, one way or another.
I hope the FBI does something, but God help anybody, I don't know what. They'd have to join the game to infiltrate it and actually, er, gather evidence. Gosh, that would be so going overboard for them. Maybe they could just eat donuts, drink coffee, and pretend to look for terrorists instead? Or maybe go bug half crazed Black people and Native Americans from the sixties? Sorry, I've got to admit I'm feeling a little nuts here.
I know bloody well that if this story is ever run or promoted, people will join The Sims Online (TSO) after having read it. It's an extremely easy game to join, a free two week trial, $10 per month and bam, you're in it. This story itself works out to promoting them (removable note to TNYT: up to you on that one.) Well, if you want to join the Mafia very easily, there you go.
News items like France and the recent riots belittle this pretty much. But that's somebody else's problem. The Federal Bureau of Investigation should be looking into at least our nation's video games. You can buy money on EBay to sell on that TSO game, kids are on that game, and they are being threatened into being recruited into the, I would assume, mostly "swarthy white people Mafia"…right now…since they keep mentioning the Italian one so much…
…the real one or the virtual one?
Who knows?
