Parent Pages new website

Venture Ski offer luxury ski chalets and family ski holidays in Sainte Foy. This resort is one of France’s hidden gems, being a modern yet traditionally styled village with a deceptively extensive pisted ski area and exceptional off-piste skiing available. The ski chalets are designed to provide all the comforts one needs on skiing holidays or winter holidays. Ste Foy is in the Haute Tarentaise region, which includes the well known Isere Valley.

Our bespoke winter holidays are designed to suit all ages; from three months old to veteran skiers, Venture Ski will make your break most memorable and our new luxury ski chalets have been designed with all the family in mind. Our ski holidays are ideal for large groups as well as small families. From self catering apartments to luxurious ski lodges, Venture Ski’s range of accommodation includes flat screen TVs, DVD players and iPod stations.

Our bigger luxury ski chalets are ideal for two to five families and an ideal getaway from the hustle and bustle of modern life. Fancy celebrating Christmas in the Alps? Our winter holidays in the Isere Valley will make your guaranteed White Christmas a reality. Our very own winter wonderland is flanked by skiing facilities in Espace Killy (Tignes / Val d’Isere), Paradiski (Les Arcs / La Plagne) and Espace San Bernado (La Rosiere / Italian ‘La Thuile’) as well as Sainte Foy. For the adventurous, we also offer heli skiing and off-piste skiing.

After a hard days skiing, Venture Ski’s guests have access to our private spa. This includes a pool, sauna facilities and a hot-tub with massages also available in the treatment room, or back in your own chalet if you prefer. Bringing young children? We offer crèche facilities for your fun and trouble-free bespoke winter family holiday.

Travelling to Sainte Foy, on the border of Italy, is easy.  With a wide range of flights and transfers available the area is close to the airports in Geneva, Chambery, Grenoble and Lyon, which are well served by low cost airline companies from London and main regional airports throughout the UK.

For luxury skiing holidays and winter holidays with something for everyone, feel free to browse through our website at your leisure. For further information why not request a brochure or a newsletter. Alternatively, use our call-back facility and we’ll be delighted to ring you at no cost.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Tel: 02075 588 278

www.ventureski.co.uk

Just how far will the fashion industry go to court publicity?

This latest campaign for revealing underwear by The Lake And Stars could be the furthest yet.

Featuring a mother and her 19-year-old daughter wearing lingerie and embracing provocatively, it begs the question, is this sexy, disturbing or awkward? And especially as, the company claims, they are not professional models, just an ordinary people who live next door to the company’s co-owner in Brooklyn, New York.

Maayan Zilberman, who runs the New York-based lingerie and swimwear label with Nikki Dekker, explained how it came about.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Boy stranded in hospital as mother tries to raise cash

A family has to raise £15,000 for the medical treatment of their 10-year-old son who is stranded in a Turkish hospital after a horrific quad bike accident.

The crash left Robbie Street with terrible head injuries and he can only return home once an air pocket in his head disperses and he will be given permission to fly.

His devastated family, from Pennington, Hampshire, are facing a huge medical bill because their travel insurance did not cover the accident as it classified quad-biking an extreme sport.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

A primary school pupil dubbed ‘mini Monet’ has earned enough to buy a new house for his family.

Nine-year-old Kieron Williamson, who has gained international renown since he began painting landscapes on a family holiday in 2008, paid £150,000 for the property in Ludham, Norfolk.

It will remain in trust until his 18th birthday. He previously lived with his parents and sister in a rented flat.

His father Keith, 44, said: ‘If he decides he wants to do something completely different when he is older, at least he won’t have to worry about a mortgage.’

Kieron’s last major exhibition of 33 paintings sold for £150,000 within half an hour last July.

His latest 12 paintings go on sale next Friday for between £1,250 and £15,595 at Norfolk’s Picturecraft Gallery.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Vicki and Octavia, our mother and daughter agony aunts, answer your questions

I am a happy size 14. The issue of whether too many cakes and pies make you fat is hardly raised in our home, and certainly not in front of our six-year-old daughter, who is as perfect as only youth can be (she’s allowed cakes, but also runs around like a mad thing). So I was shocked when she asked me recently, ‘Am I fat?’ Where is this coming from?
VICKI Is your daughter being home-schooled? Or are you being deliberately faux-naive here? You cannot opt out of the national narrative, no matter how irritating you find it. We can’t put Jamie’s School Dinners back in the box. Nor Kate Moss’s lethal remark (‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’).Nor obesity boot camps for boys too fat to play footie. I used to give thanks daily that I was no longer bringing up nine-year-olds. Now they are six! Heaven help you. But now she has raised the subject, you must work out how to deal with ‘too many pies’.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

A university student who stole his family’s £10,000 yacht has been jailed for nine months after being reported to police – by his MOTHER.

Oliver Sloley, 22, took the 30ft vessel before getting into difficulty off the coast of Cornwall.

He issued a mayday call but was so inexperienced he could not give his correct bearings and was only located by lifeboat crews after firing a flare.

Sloley, who was in his second year studying geology at Plymouth University at the time of the theft, was towed to shore where he faced the wrath of his furious mother – who promptly reported him for theft.

He has now been jailed for nine months at Truro Crown Court after admitting taking the yacht without consent and a string of other charges.

Speaking today, his mother Annabel, 47, of Penzance, Cornwall, revealed she felt duty-bound to shop her son – a decision she described as ‘hell’.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Teachers have angered parents after posting on Facebook that their children are ‘inbred’ and ‘thick’.

Teachers have angered parents after posting on Facebook that their children are ‘inbred’ and ‘thick’.
An investigation has now been launched into the comments which are believed to have involved four teachers – including the head.
During a conversation on the social networking site another teacher is also claimed to have wrote that there was a ‘massive queue’ of the school’s pupils in Poundland.
The three teachers from Westcott Primary School, Hull, as well as head teacher Debbie Johnson, appear to have been involved in a conversation during which teacher Nyanza Roberts referred to people in east Hull as “thick” and “inbred”.

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

An eight death is being investigated at a controversial maternity unit where two mothers and five babies have already died.

News of the latest tragedy was reported to the Care Quality Commission, which issued a damning report on the maternity unit at Furness General Hospital in Barrow, Cumbria, last month.

Last week, a baby was understood to have been delivered stillborn after midwives refused the mother a caesarean. Hospital sources say the child was born with the umbilical cord round its neck, a repeat of two previous deaths at the Cumbria hospital.

The baby’s distraught mother was said to be inconsolable and patients reported her pacing the corridors with the baby’s body.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

It is a common courtesy that dates back to medieval times.

But for one Northern Californian teacher a simple ‘bless you’ after a sneeze is ‘disruptive’ and banned from his high school classes.

Steve Cuckovich, who teaches health at William C. Wood High School in Vacaville, says the practice is ‘disrespectful’ and has even docked 25 points from one student’s grade for saying the phrase in class.

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A mother who drowned her daughter after attending the birth of her lover’s baby to another woman has been jailed for five and a half years.

Rachel Cowley, 43, of Shenval, Glenurquhart, cut the baby’s umbilical cord at Raigmore Hospital in February.

She then walked off with her own child, Isabelle, and drowned her in a burn.

Cowley was due to be sentenced on Wednesday but she refused to leave a psychiatric clinic with security staff tasked with taking her to court.

At the High Court in Edinburgh, judge Lord Bannatyne told Cowley that what had happened was “a dreadful tragedy” and she had deprived her daughter of her life at “such an early age”.

Source: BBC NEWS>> Read full article and comment

A new survey has found that kids hate their fathers to behave as if they’re younger than they are

How times change. When I was growing up, my dad embarrassed me by being old. By wearing jackets with leather patches, by having an Austin Maxi. And on special occasions, by picking me up from parties wearing his pyjamas under his coat.

Fast forward 40 years and that’s the kind of behaviour kids seem to want from their father. What they definitely don’t want is for you to try to look younger than you are by talking street, according to a survey-of-the-bleeding-obvious carried out by Online Opinion. Which is almost certainly the reason why you should. At least to them. Because embarrassing your kids is an important rite of passage. Or, to put it less grandly, one of the main pleasures of having teenaged children.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

A man has been found guilty of raping a woman he lured to Scotland from Latvia with the offer of a job as a nanny.

The High Court in Dundee heard that Indulus Lukstins, 50, attacked the 21-year-old in a lay-by on the A9 south of Inverness in January.

Lukstins, an Inverness prisoner, denied rape and stealing the woman’s laptop, charger and bag. He lodged a special defence that the sex was consensual.

He will be sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh on 21 October.

Source: BBC NEWS>> Read full article and comment

School friends of tragic sisters killed in house fire hold poignant assembly as fire brigade rules out faulty fridge as cause of blaze

Beko fridge-freezer ‘not forming part of the fire investigation at this time’.

Hundreds of school children gathered for a moving assembly in memory of two ‘wonderful’ teenage girls who were killed with their mother and three younger siblings in a house fire in north-west London.

Grieving pupils at the Crest Girls’ Academy were comforted by teachers as they mourned their classmates – Hanin Kua, 14, and her sister Basma, 13 – who died when the blaze swept through their home in Neasden in the early hours of Saturday.

During the short assembly before the morning’s lessons, pupils and staff paid tribute to the ‘popular, caring and diligent’ pair who were killed alongside their mother Muna Elmufatish, 41, nine-year-old sister Amal and brothers Mustafa and Yehya, aged five and two.

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Pregnant Carla Bruni makes bizarre claim that Sarko’s green fingers wooed her

Carla Bruni married Nicolas Sarkozy because of his expert knowledge of flowers including ‘tulips and roses’, France’s pregnant First Lady said today.

In one of her most bizarre interviews to date, the 43-year-old said the diminutive President was one of the most green-fingered men she had ever met.

‘When I met him, walking around the garden in the Elysee Palace, he kept giving me all these flowers’ names,’ said Miss Bruni.

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Only one in five children can tie a reef knot or repair a flat bike tyre, according to a new survey which reveals the practical skills dying out among the young.

They are the practical skills that were once ingrained in every child by the time they reached their early teens – simple tasks like how to tie a reef knot, read a map or mend a bicycle puncture.

But these basic techniques are dying out among children, a new survey has found.

Only one in five of youngsters said they could tie the knot, with only the same proportion able to repair a flat tyre on a cycle.

Even fewer (17 per cent) said they would be able to identify a star constellation using a telescope, while almost a quarter said they would not be able to make and fly a kite.

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Babies’ natural bonds with their mothers are being eroded as pushy parents attempt to fill children’s time with increasingly busy schedules, according to research.

The youngest children develop naturally by responding to human voices and touch, it is claimed.
But a new book sats that parents are pushing them too fast at a young age by filling their days with classes in yoga, swimming, music and even salsa.
Singing lullabies is one of the best ways of forging close bonds between mothers and their babies, the study said, but many parents now reject the approach because it is no longer “cool”.
Sylvie Hétu, a childcare expert, said that the development was encouraged by health workers and nursery staff who constantly attempt to interfere in children’s lives from birth.

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Deputy head uses experience as British wrestling champion to help students succeed

There maybe well be significantly less noise and bad behaviour coming from the classroom of teacher Mark Cocker – and it just might have something to do with his extra curriculum activities.

Mr Cocker, who stands 6ft tall and weighs more than 18st, has just been made deputy head at Sale High School, Greater Manchester but he is also British wrestling champion.

When the 29-year-old is not throwing opponents around the ring, he takes assemblies and offers advice and encouragement to pupils at the Trafford secondary.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

His father says ‘if he wasn’t cagefighting he’d be chucking stones at buses’

Video footage shows children battling on the floor without head guards
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt condemns the underage contests
Child safety experts call for ban and urge social work to be brought in
Council to ask club not to stage any more events involving children.

A nine-year-old cagefighter has appealed for the chance to carry on taking part in the contests claiming he enjoys the cheering crowds and insists ‘it’s good fun.’

Kian Makinson was filmed taking part in a fight with an eight-year-old boy whose father has requested he remain anonymous, kicking, shoving and grappling in front of baying adults at a social club in Preston.

His opponent, who has not been named, was left in tears, and the video footage has sparked outrage among child and medical experts, who called for a police and social services investigation.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Nearly a third of children aged ten or under now have their own mobile phone, according to survey of parents.

One in ten said their child was using an internet capable smartphone, such as the iPhone or Android devices.

The research by cloud security firm Westcoastcloud questioned 2,000 families about their technology ownership.

It comes as the government considers mandatory content filters for net connections used by children.

In those households surveyed, 16% of children owned their own laptop, while 18% had a flat-screen TV in their bedroom. A quarter of those aged ten or under had an email address while 8% had a social networking account.

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What do you do if your daughter asks to use the boys’ loos, or your son wants to go shopping in a fairy dress? Lena Corner gets some gender guidance

When Natasha Kittelsen-Clifford’s daughter Alice started in year one, overnight she turned into a “tomboy”. She cut her hair short, played football and dressed like a boy. “I thought it was just a phase so I just went along with it,” says Kittelsen-Clifford, “but my husband was really angry. He tried to force her to wear dresses, but that just made her rebel even more.”

It wasn’t long before Alice pretty much stopped playing with girls. “And when she went swimming she was really worried that the boys would find out that she was a girl, even though they knew she was a girl. She always wanted to use boys’ toilets, too. It was quite extreme and very worrying.”

The school suggested Kittelsen-Clifford should take her daughter to see a psychiatrist. “I took her along to the doctor and he said, ‘Go away, She’s absolutely fine’.”

Source: INDEPENDENT>> Read full article and comment

The father of schoolboy Damilola Taylor has launched an outspoken attack on the British justice system, claiming that his son’s killers were freed because of overcrowding from the London riots.

Richard Taylor, whose 10-year-old son bled to death on a stairwell in south London in 2000 after being stabbed by local thugs, said an urgent reform of the criminal justice system was required.
“For us who have lost our son and for the many other parents who have lost their children we feel the law needs to be tightened up and for sentences to reflect the offences,” said Mr Taylor, who held a personal meeting with David Cameron to discuss the issue.
Damilola was stabbed with a broken bottle in November 2000 in Peckham, south London, in a high-profile case which exposed the capital’s “feral” gang youth culture.

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Who needs parenting manuals? If you need advice, just ask someone with no kids …

On Thursday morning, when I had a streaming cold and a 12-hour poker tournament to play (starting in the morning! All day! Like a job! Whatever happened to gamblers being society’s drop-outs? I liked that), I wrote miserably on Twitter: “Does anybody have an idea for a column?”

The news seemed so starkly divided between the bleakly dull (analysing the world financial markets? I can’t understand my own gas bill) and the utterly trivial (Mike Tindall squeezes bar-room blonde he then doesn’t have sex with! “Royal family shocked” claim newspapers, as Queen yawns: “Wake me up when there’s a toe-sucking photo, a leaked tape about tampons and a murder conspiracy around a mysterious Parisian death”), that I offered a free book in return, which didn’t even have to be mine.

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Tomboy, a new film about a girl who passes herself off as a boy to her friends, brings back memories for one former tomboy

There’s a moment in the new French movie Tomboy, when our “hero” triumphantly rips off her football shirt, that gave me both a rush of joy and a lump in my throat. This is 10-year-old Laure, who’s passing herself off to her new friends as a boy called Michaël in Céline Sciamma’s superb new drama about a girl who’s definitely not into pink. When Michaël pulls the shirt off to reveal a naked, flat-chested torso, it pulled me right back into my own tomboy childhood – that bliss you feel when nobody knows you’re really a girl, that fantastic lightness of being you experience when you are managing to be utterly and euphorically yourself.

Zoé Héran is mesmerising as the shyly swaggering Laure/Michaël. She is a much cooler tomboy than I ever was back in the 70s. I occasionally “passed” as a boy when my mother let me have really short hair, but willowy Michaël passes all the time. Her mother doesn’t let her wear swimming trunks to the pool (mine did), but she does not have the budding breast problem I suffered at her age. I would walk round the swimming pool with my arms extended ludicrously into the air pretending to casually stretch and yawn, because that made the irritating buds disappear.

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A leading children’s charity has called for a ban on television advertising aimed at under-12s after a study revealed that many families feel pressured by a materialistic culture in the UK.

Unicef UK called for the move after research has shown that children feel trapped in a materialistic culture and do not spend enough time with their families.

The charity said the research provides some insight into the underlying issues behind the English riots – which saw children as young as 11 looting stores.

The study, conducted on 250 children from Spain, Sweden and the UK, found that youngsters’ happiness was dependent on spending time with a stable family and having plenty of things to do, especially outdoors, rather than on owning technology or branded clothes.

Source: London Evening Standard>> Read full article and comment

A man who posted abusive messages on memorial websites dedicated to dead children was jailed for 18 weeks yesterday, and banned from using social networking sites for five years.

Sean Duffy, 25, admitted posting images on Facebook and YouTube mocking the deaths of four children, including Natasha MacBryde, 15, who committed suicide and was found dead on a railway line near her home in Worcestershire in February.

Reading Magistrates’ Court heard that following her death, Duffy posted a video with Natasha’s face imposed on Thomas the Tank Engine to a Facebook tribute page set up by her brother.

In a statement read to the court, her father Andrew MacBryde said that Duffy’s actions had “added to the horror of dealing with the death of their beautiful daughter”. Duffy, who had posted the images using false details, was traced by police through information from his internet service provider and arrested.

Source: INDEPENDENT>> Read full article and comment

New study reveals UK has one of worst dropout rates in developing world

Britain has some of the worst dropout rates from schools and colleges in the developed world – more than nations such as Estonia, Greece and Slovenia, it was revealed yesterday.

An international study shows more 15 to 19-year-olds in the UK are ‘Neet’ – not in employment, education or training – per capita than most other developed nations.

Only eight countries, including Turkey, Mexico and Brazil, had more unemployed teens with nothing to do.

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Vicki and Octavia, our mother and daughter agony aunts, answer your questions

My 13-year-old daughter is self-harming by cutting herself. I speak a lot with her, and try to support her in every situation and be her friend. When I first noticed it, I asked her not to do it, but she has done it again and again. Now she’s hardly eating anything either. What can I do to make her realise she’s going to make herself really ill?
VICKI Thirteen is very young to be cutting and scarring. I was 20 before I met a girl at university who stubbed cigarettes out on her wrists: you could smell her flesh burning. I thought she was a histrionic attention-seeker, but she was desperately troubled. I think your daughter is ill right now. And while she needs every bit of support you can give her, you may not be the right person to cure her, simply because you are her mother. Ask for her to be seen by a psychiatrist – for the anorexia as much as the cutting and scarring. I am very sorry for both of you.

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Alice Ozma’s father read her a story every night from the age of nine to 18. But why? By Emine Saner

At the age of nine, Alice Ozma and her father, Jim, set themselves a challenge: he would read to her every day for 100 days. They started with The Tin Woodman of Oz and ended with Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days by Stephen Manes. The next morning, they celebrated completing the “Streak”, as it would become known, with pancakes at their favourite diner near their home in Millville, New Jersey, on the US east coast. Then Alice suggested that they carry on for 1,000 nights.

Jim, a children’s librarian, was dubious about the prospect. Little did he know that he would end up reading to his daughter every night for 3,218 nights – nearly nine full years – until the day she left for college. They devoured hundreds of books: children’s titles by Beverly Cleary and Roald Dahl, teenage novels by Judy Blume and Anthony Horowitz, and weightier reads such as Great Expectations and Macbeth.

Source: GUARDIAN>> Read full article and comment

Youth Justice Board says half of under-18s facing riot charges had no previous contact with criminal justice system

The influx of child prisoners accused of involvement in last month’s looting and rioting has contributed to an 8% increase in the juvenile prison population in England and Wales.

That calculation is based on Youth Justice Board (YJB) figures which show 170 riot offenders aged under 18 are now in custody, adding to the 2,075 child prisoners recorded in June, the latest statistics available. A Ministry of Justice report out on Thursday suggests a lower tally; it says there are 125 juveniles behind bars for riot offences, with 21 sentenced and 104 on remand.

The Guardian has learned that two-fifths of children in custody have had no previous connection with youth offending teams – a marker of criminal behaviour which resulted in a court order.

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Millions of parents are ‘clueless’ about traditional values

All couples could be given guidance through the NHS on how to be responsible parents.

Under radical plans being drawn up by David Cameron to reverse Britain’s social malaise, they would have access to advice modelled on that offered by the National Childbirth Trust on giving birth.

The move comes amid concerns that millions are ‘clueless’ about how to bring up their children with proper moral boundaries.

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Fourteen children have been taken to hospital after they were stung by bees, the ambulance services says.

Paramedics were called to a nature reserve near Rhos-on-Sea, Conwy, at around 11:20 BST.

The youngsters were taken to Colwyn Bay Hospital for treatment following the incident.

Source: BBC NEWS>> Read full article and comment

Melanie has terminal cancer yet determined to start a family she chose to get pregnant

Twenty-nine weeks into her first pregnancy, Melanie Jaggard is eagerly anticipating the arrival of twins. Like any excited mum-to-be, her mind is full of questions. Will they be boys, girls or one of each? Scans so far have failed to determine their gender, so they have decided to keep it a surprise.

What will their personalities be like and will she and her husband Charlie ever agree on girls’ names? Melanie likes old-fashioned names, but Charlie is less keen. Will the first few months pass in a haze of sleepless nights and disorganised chaos, or will it be the blissful realisation of a dream they have both long hoped for?

‘I’m loving my pregnancy and now I just can’t wait to meet our babies,’ says Melanie, 32, whose non-identical twins are due on November 7.‘I think Charlie would love a son to play cricket and rugby with and I would love a daughter to buy pinks and purples for, but really as long as they are healthy we would both be happy.’

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Rugby has always rather prided itself on the behaviour of its followers, both on and off the field.

And the old saying that it was a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen was often trotted out as the sport looked down on footballers and their fans.

But it seems the blight of aggressive and foul-mouthed spectators is no longer unique to football. Indeed, the problem has become so acute at children’s rugby games that angry mothers and fathers are to receive lessons in good conduct as part of a £110,000 scheme. Officials at junior games are increasingly being assaulted. Games have had to be abandoned because of fights – with one man even pulling out a knife at a children’s match in Wales. The Bill McLaren Foundation is to hire development officers to train spectators to set a good example to their children.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

Outrage as social workers break up ‘loving’ family

Social services faced outrage yesterday for taking four obese children from their parents.

The couple have lost a three-year battle with the authorities and their youngest children – girls aged 11, seven and one, and a boy of five – will either be ‘fostered without contact’ or adopted.

The move follows a failed attempt to solve the children’s weight problem by putting the family in a ‘Big Brother’ house, having a social worker present to monitor all meal times, and imposing a curfew and strict rules about their lifestyle.

Source: DAILYMAIL>> Read full article and comment

The parents of a 21-year-old missing since Sunday say they think he is still alive, despite his girlfriend being confirmed drowned.

It’s thought Robert Crofts and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Hayley Holmes went swimming off the promenade at New Brighton on Merseyside on Sunday evening after shoes and a mobile phone were found at the water’s edge.
Miss Holmes’s body was found washed-up on the beach by a dog walker on Monday. Mr Crofts is still missing with his trainers and phone unclaimed at the beauty spot.
His parents made an emotional appeal for their son to make contact.
“It’s been five days of wondering where you are and how you are. It’s been the longest five days of our lives,” Robert’s mother, Ellen Ann said

Source: TELEGRAPH>> Read full article and comment

The towns where children are fatter than their parents

The obesity epidemic has reached such proportions that in many towns children are fatter than their parents.

An analysis of official statistics has found 22 districts in England where there is a higher ratio of 11-year-olds officially declared obese – so fat that their health is in danger – than adults.

These include Oxford, Watford and a large number of London boroughs.

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It was a special moment as big sister got in close for a very big cuddle.

Newlywed Zara Phillips and her half-sister Stephanie, 13, daughter of Captain Mark Phillips and his American wife Sandy, were pictured together at the Burghley horse trials in Stamford, Lincolnshire, yesterday.

Stephanie was a bridesmaid at Zara’s wedding to England rugby star Mike Tindall in July and both sisters are expected to compete in the 50th anniversary three day event. Zara has another half-sister on the other side of the world, who she has never met – Felicity Tonkin, 26, the love child of Captain Phillips who lives on a farm in New Zealand with her mother, Heather.

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Children will soon be going back to school and increasing numbers of them will be stashing iPads in their satchels. Here are some apps worth downloading.

The Human Body (£9.99)
The textbook of the future could just as well be an app. Many books, such as Dorling Kindersley’s The Human Body, are already available in application form. The interactive version of the book, which costs £9.99, contains hours of material, including articles, videos, 3D graphics and more. It’s an exploratory experience, rather than a linear one. The best way to start is to pick it up and explore – look out for the beating heart and breathing lungs.

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A disgraced detective admitted today to defrauding a police children’s charity, which raised funds for crime victims, out of at least £26,000.

Ex-Detective Sergeant Louise Ord, 42, who was sacked by City of London Police in February last year, controlled the force’s charity Child Victims of Crime.

Ord, of Basildon, Essex, who worked with sexual abuse victims, was a nominated signature on cheque’s paid on the charity’s behalf and sat on it’s committee.

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Everything changes when a student leaves home – but it’s not always for the worse, says Kate Hilpern

When she drove away, leaving her 18-year-old daughter Emma to begin a degree at the University of Nottingham last Autumn, Sue Dearden cried all the way down the M1. “I was surprised and overwhelmed by how sad I felt. I’ve always worked and felt that would prepare me, but when I called my husband to tell him I was heading home, I actually couldn’t speak because I was so upset. I kept seeing in my mind the forlorn face Emma had when I left, and I was a complete mess for days.”

Sue had the added worry that her daughter wouldn’t cope. “She is slightly dyslexic and struggled at school, so I was concerned that the academic focus of university would be too much. I did wonder if she’d be home within weeks.

Source: INDEPENDENT>> Read full article and comment

Young people smell a rat when Shakespeare is approached as some kind of cultural obligation. It’s better to engage them with a more honest take on his plays

I have a confession to make. Earlier this year, in a theatre, halfway through a show, I slipped my 11-year-old son an iPhone and suggested that he play some games on it. I’m not proud of this act of treason. It was prompted by the look on the boy’s face as he glared at the stage, and by a rising panic in my chest that he was about to be put off theatre for ever. Look away, I wanted to say. It’s not all like this, I promise. This was a play whose publicity promised irreverence and fun. A play that was an hour and 15 minutes. A play in modern English. In other words – not even Shakespeare.

Theatre for young audiences groans under the weight of its responsibility to keep the future engaged in an art form that sometimes feels like it’s hanging by a thread. Shakespeare for young audiences doubles that pressure, requesting an engagement not only with the future, but also with the past. So why bother? The risk and responsibility is too great. Why not hang on, and introduce his plays as archaeological literary digs at A-level – like Chaucer or Milton? What would young people really lose? Harry Potter speaks more directly to them than Prospero. Jacqueline Wilson’s heroines are more immediately identifiable than Rosalind or Viola.

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I don’t like the way my father treats my mother – what can I do?

I am 23, female, and live with my parents, who are in their 50s and 60s. My father has always been a more dominant figure than my mother, partly because (I think) my mother is reluctant to stand up for herself or object to something she doesn’t like, choosing to bottle up her emotions instead.

My father was a successful businessman, and he always got his own way. He is a brusque person, and not sympathetic to other people’s feelings, which is perhaps why I am much closer to my mother, as we support each other emotionally.

When he retired seven years ago, his behaviour towards my mother changed from brusque to rude, then to what I felt was abusive. He dismisses her opinions, speaks over her, chides her for interrupting him and can be incredibly patronising. He lectures her about how she handles her business (she still works).

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English social workers pursue yet another mother who had taken refuge in Ireland with her child.

Almost hourly last week I followed yet another child-snatching drama, as bizarre and disturbing as any I have reported. So irked were the social workers of an English council when, six months ago, a mother and her 14-year-old son evaded their clutches by fleeing to Ireland that they hit on a cunning ruse. They tracked down the woman’s former husband, who had not seen his son for seven years, and paid for him to go to Dublin to front a case for “child abduction”, on the grounds that his son had been taken abroad without his consent.
The judge, relying on a document supplied at the last minute by the English social workers, which the mother and son were not allowed to see or challenge, ruled – in defiance of the UN Convention on Children’s Rights and a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights – that the boy must be returned to England. He was so distraught that he attempted suicide, spending two days in hospital before waiting in council care to be deported.

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Parents are feeding other people’s children and inviting them to stay during the holidays amid concerns that they are neglected at home, a poll has suggested.

One in four parents said children are more likely to be neglected during the school holidays than during term time.

And one in ten (10%) admitted they have cared for a child in the school holidays that was not their own because they thought they were not being properly looked after at home.

The Action For Children poll questioned 2,000 parents with a child aged under 18 about their concerns for other people’s children during the summer holidays.

The findings show that one in seven parents (14%) say they have had someone else’s child over for a meal in the holidays because they were not sure that the youngster was being fed properly at their own house, while 10% said they had taken another child on a family trip or outing.

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BEL MOONEY and AMANDA PLATELL take sides

Writer Polly Samson has launched a campaign to reduce the 16-month jail sentence her son Charlie Gilmour received after hanging from the Cenotaph flag in London during violent student protests last December.

She has described his punishment as ‘a complete waste of his time and our tax’.

On Twitter, Miss Samson claimed her 21-year-old son’s celebrity status — his adoptive father is Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour — may have been used against him.

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How mothers are mixing childcare with cocktails

The full-time role of motherhood is not an easy one.

As many a mother can attest to, a glass of wine at the end of a long day is a way to wind down and enjoy some adult time.

Now, ABC’s Good Morning America says that mothers are combining social drinking with childrens’ playdates, meaning that whilst sippy cups are handed to babies, mothers raise a glass of iced white wine.

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Health fears for children who watch TV while using iPads, phones and laptops

If you’re an adult in this hi-tech age, you might struggle with the multi-tasking nature of receiving a text while watching the TV.

But there’s a generation growing up which is totally at ease with juggling four interactive devices at the same time.

Researchers say ten and 11-year-olds are often ‘multi-screen viewing’ – watching the TV while simultaneously using iPads, smartphones, laptops and hand-held gaming computers.

While that might seem quite skilful, they warn that such sedentary behaviour is believed to increase the risk of obesity and mental health problems in youngsters.

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By day she was a respected teaching assistant at a Catholic school, where the pupils called her ‘Miss’.

But Kimberley Bray was living a double life as a gangster’s moll, storing an arsenal of guns at her home.

When police raided the home the 45-year-old shared with former pub landlord Paul Taylor, they found the weapons – two of which had been used in gangland shootings – on ‘open display’, as well as a cannabis farm. Yesterday she was jailed for eight years after being found guilty of possessing the guns, including a Tariq self-loading pistol, a 12-bore Benelli shotgun, a Glock 9mm handgun, and 550 bullets.

She was cleared of possessing a Skorpion submachine gun and helping to set up the cannabis farm in one of the bedrooms.

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Parents consider appealing against length of sentence

Student rioter Charlie Gilmour is being locked up for 23 hours a day, according to his mother.

Novelist Polly Samson also says he has been offered pick-pocketing lessons by another prisoner.

Miss Samson, 49, who is married to Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour, was devastated when her son was jailed for 16 months after showing the ‘ultimate disrespect’ to Britain’s war dead by swinging from the flag on the Cenotaph.

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He thinks the teenage father of the child is a ‘decent young man’
Young mum Tia admits ‘she wouldn’t be happy’ if newborn Gracie became pregnant at 14

A 29-year-old man who has become one of Britain’s youngest grandparents was left red-faced after nurses asked him to prove he was over 16 as he tried to visit his daughter’s baby.

Unemployed Shem Davies was overjoyed when 14-year-old Tia gave birth to Gracie earlier this month.

But when he tried to visit the ward, maternity nurses thought the fresh-faced granddad was in fact the teenage father of Gracie and asked him to prove his age.

Shem and former girlfriend Kelly John, 30, became parents to Tia at the age of 15. Their daughter’s boyfriend, Jordan Williams, is 15.

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