VIDEO: Lord Tebbit turns children's writer

Pilot, trade union rep, member of parliament, cabinet mister, member of the House of Lords, cookbook writer- what else could life offer a man like Norman Tebbit?

His latest incarnation is as a children's writer, and his latest book features a talking Labrador.

The central character is a 14-year-old boy who is left paralysed after a car crash which kills his father.

Lord Tebbit's wife has been in a wheelchair since the bomb explosion at the Conservative party conference 30 years ago.

He spoke to Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman about his children's book.

View the original article here

VIDEO: Lord Tebbit turns children's writer

Pilot, trade union rep, member of parliament, cabinet mister, member of the House of Lords, cookbook writer- what else could life offer a man like Norman Tebbit?

His latest incarnation is as a children's writer, and his latest book features a talking Labrador.

The central character is a 14-year-old boy who is left paralysed after a car crash which kills his father.

Lord Tebbit's wife has been in a wheelchair since the bomb explosion at the Conservative party conference 30 years ago.

He spoke to Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman about his children's book.

View the original article here

UK lags in children's well-being

3 May 2011 Last updated at 13:45 By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent Sweden is the best country in the world for children's well-being, according to Save the Children The UK is in the bottom half of an international league table of developed countries for "well-being" in childhood.

The rankings from Save the Children put Sweden in first place - with the UK in 23rd place out of 43 countries.

The report highlights the UK's relatively low rate of enrolment in education before school age.

A spokesman for England's education department, said Sure Start services would be "targeted at the poorest".

The report places Italy and Japan in joint second place, with the UK behind countries including France, Hungary, Slovenia and Estonia.

Worst place

There are also rankings for developing countries - with the overall worst place for childhood identified as Somalia.

The rankings for children's well-being are based on factors including enrolment in pre-school and secondary level education, and levels of infant mortality.

In terms of pre-primary education, the charity says the UK has a lower level of enrolment than many other developed countries - which it describes as a "national embarrassment".

"We can't be complacent about the state of early schooling for children in this country. If we are to catch up with our European neighbours, we have to take urgent steps to remedy this," said Save the Children's chief executive, Justin Forsyth.

"In particular, the government has to reverse the cuts to support for childcare it is imposing on poorest families," he said.

In response, a Department for Education spokesman said: "Tackling disadvantage and raising the life chances of the poorest children is critical to narrowing the gap and giving every child a fair start in life.

"We've increased the free entitlement to 15 hours per week of early years provision for all three and four-year-olds from last September - and are now extending it to all poor two-year-olds.

"We are also retaining Sure Start as a universal service for all - but want it much better targeted at the poorest families which need the most help."

The United States lags behind the UK in 34th place - with a considerably worse infant mortality rate than many countries in western and central Europe.

Mothers' index

There are also tables showing the relative best and worst places to be a mother.

The highest ranked place in this Mothers' Index is Norway, followed by Australia and Iceland. The UK performs more strongly in this table, being ranked in 13th place.

Afghanistan is in the lowest place for the Mothers' Index. While a typical Norwegian mother might expect to live to 83 and to have 18 years of education, a typical mother in Afghanistan will live to 45 and spend less than five years in education.

The United States also does poorly in the Mothers' Index.

The report says that this reflects that the US has the worst rate in the developed world for the proportion of women dying in childbirth or from complications in pregnancy.

It says that a woman in the US is seven times more likely to die of a pregnancy-related illness than in Italy or Ireland.

Children in the US are also twice as likely to die before the age of five than children in countries such as Finland, Greece, Slovenia or Singapore.

The report also identifies the US as having the "least generous" maternity leave arrangements among wealthier countries.

Looking at the gap between the top-ranking western European countries and those at the bottom, such as in Afghanistan and countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the report says: "Statistics are far more than numbers.

"It is the human despair and lost opportunities behind these numbers that call for changes to ensure that mothers everywhere have the basic tools they need to break the cycle of poverty and improve the quality of life for themselves, their children, and for generations to come."

CHILDRENS DOLLS HOUSES CHEAP FURNITURE UK DOLL HOUSE KITS WONHAM ...

COSY DOLLS HOUSES 84 MORTIMER STREET HERNE BAY KENT THE SHOP IS CLOSED ON MONDAYS & WEDNESDAYS AFTER HOURS PLEASE CALL 01227 375099 DOLLS HOUSE HISTORY

Dolls houses and dolls house furnitue domestic articles and resident inhabitants were used ,(both people and animals), have been made for thousands of years. The earliest known dolls houses were found in the Egyptian Tombs of the Old Kingdom, created nearly five thousand years ago. These wooden models of servants, furnishings, boats, livestock and pets placed in the Pyramids almost certainly were made for religious purposes. The earliest known European dolls houses are from the Sixteenth Century. These baby or cabinet dolls houses showed idealized interiors complete with extremely detailed furnishings and accessories (mostly hand made).

The early European dolls houses were each unique, constructed on a custom basis by individual craftsmen. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, factories began mass producing toys, including dolls houses and miniatures suitable for furnishing them. German companies noted for their dolls houses included Christian Hacker, Moritz Gottschalk, Elastolin, and Moritz Reichel. The list of important English companies includes Siber & Fleming, Evans & Cartwright, and Lines Brothers (which became Tri-ang). By the end of the Nineteenth Century American dolls houses were being made in the United States by The Bliss Manufacturing Company.

Germany was the producer of the most prized dolls houses and doll house miniatures up until The Great War. Notable German miniature companies included Marklin, Rock and Garner and others. Their products were not only avidly collected in Central Europe, but regularly exported to Britain and North America. Germany's involvement in WWI seriously impeded both production and export. New manufacturers in other countries arose.

The Toy Furniture Shop of Providence, Rhode Island (The TynieToy Company) made authentic replicas of American antique houses and furniture in a uniform scale beginning in about 1917 [3]. Other American companies of the early Twentieth Century were Roger Williams Toys, Tootsietoy, Schoenhut, and the Wisconsin Toy Co. Dolls house dolls and miniatures were also produced in Japan, mostly by copying original German designs.

After WW II dolls houses became mass produced in factories on a much larger scale, and with less detailed craftsmanship, than ever before. By the 1950's the typical dollhouse sold commercially was painted sheet metal filled with plastic furniture. The cost of these dolls houses was low enough to allow the great majority of girls from the developed western countries that were not struggling with rebuilding after WWII to own a dolls house.

The baby houses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the toy dollhouses of the nineteenth and early twentieth century rarely had uniform scales, even for the features or contents of any one individual house. Although a number of manufacturers made lines of miniature toy furniture in the Nineteenth Century, these products were not to a strict scale.

There have been several standard scales in dolls houses over the years. Children's toy houses during most of the 20th century were three quarter scale (where 1 foot is represented by 3/4 of an inch), also known as 1:18 (1" equals 18"). Popular brands included Lundby (Sweden) (established in 1947 and still going strong), Renwal, Plasco, Marx, Petite Princess, and T. Cohn (all American) and Caroline's Home, Barton, Dol-Toi and Triang (English). A few nominally 3/4-scale brands may run closer to 1:16 scale. With the exception of Lundby, 3/4-scale furniture was most often made from plastic. Houses were made from a variety of materials, including metal (tin litho), fibreboard, plastic, and wood.

In Germany during the middle part of the 20th century 1/10th scale became popular (based on a metric system where 10 inches is represented by 1 inch). Toylike houses coming out of Germany today remain closer in scale to 1:10 than to 1:12.

In the 1970s, the standard for adult collectors became 1/12th (also called 1" or one inch scale, represented in the U.S. as 1:12). There is also half inch scale or 1/24th (1 foot is represented by 1/2 an inch), quarter inch scale or 1/48th (1 foot is represented by 1/4 of an inch), and "dollhouse for a dollhouse" (1:144). Half-inch scale was popular in Marx dolls houses in the 1950s but only became widely available in "collector" houses after 2002, about the same time that even smaller scales became more popular. These smaller scales are much more common in the U.S. than in Britain.

And finally there is "Playscale" or 1/6th which is proportionate for Barbie and other similar dolls.

Contemporay kit and fully built dolls houses are typically made of plywood or medium density fibreboard. Tab-and-slot kits use a thinner plywood and are held together by a system of tabs and slots (plus glue). These dolls houses are usually light-weight and lower cost but often require siding, shingles, or other exterior treatments to look their best. Kits made from heavier plywood or MDF are held together with nails and glue. In the U.S., most houses have an open back and a fancy front facade, while British dolls houses are more likely to have a hinged front that opens to reveal the rooms. The great majority of contemporary dolls houses are built in one inch scale.

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