Half-baked Breakfast Plan

I've just returned from three days  external examining in Belfast, where the lead story in Thursday's local paper was about the new president of the Faculty of Public Health describing his plan to prevent parents from driving their children to the school gates. Apparently, Professor John Ashton thinks that childhood obesity can be tackled by forcing pupils to walk a couple of hundred yards each day.
He says that

"One of the things we really should be doing is strictly prohibiting cars stopping outside school to drop kids off but have drop-off points, if at all, a few hundred yards away so at least the children get to walk a quarter of a mile each day from the dropping-off point ... it would make a difference."

Now it isn't that I think the sentiment is wrong, after all surely any exercise is better than nothing, but the removal of parental choice surely is. Pr Ashton's bullying tone is nothing to do with suggestions or recommendations, it's entry-level fascism. "Strictly prohibited" applies to all parents; not just those who haven't the sense to work out a food/fresh air ratio, or realise that maybe fried/fast food leads to little Johny/Jane/Jamal turning into something not-so-little around the middle.

This will doubtless lead to parents either risking the legion of ticket-happy goons waiting to enforce this directive on any car that dawdles by the school gates, or allow teenage art projects than have taken weeks to prepare getting ruined by a rain storm or blown apart in a gale. And for those who play sport, there's now the disincentive of lugging a cricket/hockey/football/rugby/etc bag an extra half-mile a day in addition to their school books!

Pr Ashton doesn't appear to have thought this though, but if he's the "UK's leading public health expert", what sort of alternative plan would those less qualified have come up with?

The Lights are on but Nobody's Holme(s)

Travelling back from our capital city this evening, I picked up a copy of the Evening Standard which has a story about how the Museum of London intends to make Sherlock Holmes the subject of it's 2014 "blockbuster exhibition". The article includes an interview with the museum's director, Sharon Ament, who is quoted as saying that it will "delve into the brain of one of the most famous Londoners of all time" and "look behind the deerstalker, pipe and cape in search of the 'real', complex and multifaceted Sherlock Holmes". She adds that "we all think we know Sherlock Holmes, but do we really?"

Having never met Ms Ament, I've no idea whether she actually believes the great detective to be a genuine historical figure, or if this is just some publicity-driven smoke and mirrors. Either way, openly displaying fiction as fact isn't something that any respectable institution ought to get involved in if it wants to retain public trust and academic credibility.