Robert Hampton

Another visitor! Stay a while… stay forever!

4th June 2011

Values for money
Posted by at 2.35pm | In the News | 1 response

Apparently the government aren’t content to go back to the 1980s, and we’re now heading back to the 1950s:

David Cameron is to back a plan to stop retailers selling inappropriate clothes for pre-teens and shield children from sexualised imagery across all media, including selling “lads magazines” in brown covers and making the watchdog Ofcom more answerable to the views of parents.

Retailers would be required to sign up to a new code preventing the sale of items for pre-teens with suggestive slogans, which the prime minister has repeatedly criticised.

Selling “sexy” clothes to kids is pretty low-grade thing to do, but surely fingers need to be pointed at the parents that are buying these things for their kids in the first place? If T-shirts with the Playboy Bunny logo on them didn’t sell, the shops wouldn’t stock them.

Tighter restrictions on the 9pm watershed won’t work when most kids have TVs in their bedroom and are allowed to watch whatever they want at any time of night.

I’m also not sure that “sexualised imagery” on TV, billboards and magazines distresses children, although it might result in an awkward discussion or two with mum and dad.

Really this seems to be the government taking the easy way out and getting some positive headlines. After all, telling parents to take more responsibility probably doesn’t make a good headline on the front page of the Daily Mail.

7th February 2011

A room with a view
Posted by at 10.35pm | It's My Life | No responses

Loft conversions are not something to be undertaken lightly. We’ve just had one done, and a lot of upheaval was involved. I missed most of it myself because I was flat-sitting for my friend Andrew while the worst of the work went on, but my unfortunate family had to live in a house with no roof for six weeks.

Still, it was worth it, and I now have a new “pad” (as the cool kids like to say) to be proud of. Alert MTV Cribs to send a camera crew!

New Bedroom 1 New Bedroom 2

It would be nice to have a home that isn’t attached to my parents’ house, but I’m working on that. At least I have a proper space for my important world-domination work to be carried out. There’s even enough room for a basic videoblogging set up, but that’s a project for another day…