Arch to Arc....in a gym?

Sunday we all went up to the Sue Ryder Home on Leckhampton Lane to meet with the fundraising contact - Lucy. We had a tour of the grounds and discussed some fund raising ideas....

Being men the thoughts turned to something a bit extreme and the word endurance was mentioned...it started as why don't we swim the channel as a relay team in a pool? 23.89miles between the 4 of us. Spreadsheet constructed and claculation done it didn't seem far enough or extreme enough.

That's when it evolved to doing the Arch to Arc triathlon as a relay in the gym.

The Arch to Arc is an extreme triathlon where you start at Marble Arch in London, run the 89miles to Dover where you then swim the 23.89miles of the English Channel before cycling the 179miles to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

With three of the team being Esporta members that is the venue of choice assuming that they will allow this to take place..

Watch this space - we'll do something extreme just a case of what? If you've got any ideas post them on here in the comments! 

Taken from http://www.shurdingtontriclub.co.uk 

10yr olds do know right from wrong

"...England's children's commissioner Maggie Atkinson had told the Times (Newspaper) that most criminals under 12 did not fully understand their actions..."
(Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8565619.stm)


This statement and lots of other comment has been prevalent in the media in recent weeks following the arrest of John Venables for a new crime.

John Venables served eight years in custody from the age of ten for murder of James Bulger. A crime so horrific and disturbing that it will forever be burned onto the psyche of the UK population. The argument that, at ten years old, they did not know what they were doing I find frankly disturbing.

I have a 10 year old son that asked recently what the news story regarding Venables and Bulger was about - we explained it to him and he got very upset and was moved to tears. He is ten years old and very much knows right and wrong.

Do the parents need to take more responsibility for how they bring children up? I know nothing of Venables home life, or indeed of Thompson his partner in the Bulger killing but at that age don't the parents need to take some responsibility? Whilst there will always be some people that are fundamentally bad a lot of it has to be about environment. A child from a violent (this could be being allowed to watch adult tv, films and games and not necessarily actual physical abuse) or disrespectful home life has to be affected by that? Don't children basically copy their parents?
I do think that at 10years old a child having comitted a crime should be punished, reeducated and rehabilitated but that the whole picture should be considered and by that i mean the parents have to take some of the responsibility. Children of ten years old do know right from wrong where there is a potential disparity is in their definition of it that will be handed to them from their parents.