Airguns (non boaty)

[coco]

Blair Felt 'Very Sorry' for Jailed Airgun Teacher

By Joanne Clements, PA

The Prime Minister tonight said he felt “very sorry” for a teacher who was jailed for grabbing an airgun to confront “yobs” outside her home.

Tony Blair said he had read about the case of Linda Walker, who is serving a six-month jail sentence in Styal Prison, Cheshire, and felt sorry for her.

Walker, 48, fired an air-pistol at the pavement during a stand-off with a gang of youths outside her home in Urmston, Manchester, last August.

At her trial she said her family and home had been plagued by anti-social behaviour from the “yobs”, but she was jailed last month after being found guilty of affray and possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear and violence.

She told police she had received nuisance phone calls abusing her family, her garden shed had been broken into, and a car and her garden had been vandalised.

Tonight, speaking on Granada Reports, the Prime Minister said he hoped Home Office minister Hazel Blears would intervene in Walker’s teaching disciplinary hearing and make sure the 48-year-old could attend.

He said: “I actually feel very sorry for Linda Walker and I hope Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister, has intervened in her disciplinary hearing to ensure it is at a time when she can be there because she has been a teacher for many years.”

He added: “I can’t start interfering in court decisions but I read about the case in the papers at the time and I do feel very sorry for her.”

I am puzzled! Does anybody make any sense of this? Air gun = firearm?

 

[Lakesailor]

Bliar is casting around looking for anything that may garner a few votes. He doesn't have to act on his supposed concerns when re-elected.
Why change the habits of............

 

[Joe_Cole]

I agree with Blair. The woman was at hers wits end because of hooligans and, whilst she shouldn't have done what she did, the punishment is harsh.

What would you have done in the circumstances she was faced with?

 

[Norman_E]

The law is a complete ass on airguns. Any air gun over a certain power level is classed as a firearm under current legislation. The level is such that all currently sold airguns of the spring driven type are below the limit and do not need a firearms certificate. I know of no air pistol which even comes close to the limit, essentially because you need the length of a rifle barrel or eqivalent underlever to compress a powerful enough spring. Despite this the woman concerned was convicted of an offence with something which is not even legally a firearm, and the evidence given, and police comment after the trial used firearm terminology.

 

[Althorne]

Er, has everyone conveniently forgotten that only 3 weeks ago a baby died as the result of being shot in the head by a "stray pellet shot" from an air-gun and that Blair is responsible for the "yobs" not being "chastised" (preferably with a much bigger and more deadly gun) enough to prevent them doing it again.
Our wonderful police have obviously given out the right meassage to the "yobs" yet again. But you can make a very big difference in just about 3 weeks time if you want to, especially if you get out of that comfy armchair and go and convince a few others to do the same.

 

[Johnjo]

What I would like to know is if he felt so sorry for her, Why did he not speak up sooner !

Its all about the coming election and getting the votes in !

Piddly air pistol, a firearm, since when !

 

[gandy]

[ QUOTE ]
The law is a complete ass on airguns. Any air gun over a certain power level is classed as a firearm under current legislation. The level is such that all currently sold airguns of the spring driven type are below the limit and do not need a firearms certificate. I know of no air pistol which even comes close to the limit, essentially because you need the length of a rifle barrel or eqivalent underlever to compress a powerful enough spring. Despite this the woman concerned was convicted of an offence with something which is not even legally a firearm, and the evidence given, and police comment after the trial used firearm terminology.

[/ QUOTE ]

The power level is 12 foot pounds for a rifle, but only 6fpe for a pistol.

I think the terminology stems from the fact that airguns use and abuse are covered by he same laws as firearms. Hence misuse of an airgun becomes a firearms offence.

Tony S

 

[Danny_Labrador]

Does this add anything to the debate ?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_east/4474757.stm





PS.... I think that we had better get out of here, this thread is illegal !!!





See you in the lounge.





I'am off don't want a bad name.

 

[ClassicPlastic]

Yep, this should be in the lounge. But:

Let's get away from this obsession with gun laws...

If those kids had been properly disciplined, and had some notion of respect and what constitutes acceptable behaviour, the incident would never have happened...

Bliars' obsession with rights without responsibilites, and the fact that these days we're all frightened of saying anything which might be construed as 'non-PC', have led us to this place.

Bring back the clip around the ear, the back of the police van, and 'He fell down the stairs, sarge'!

I was sworn at and accosted by a city-centre drunk today, and reported it immediately to a PC who was nearby (and who had been chatting for some time to two young girls who had both dressed for warm weather...)

Said drunk was clearly incapable, incoherent, and abusive. The PC took about thirty seconds to tell him off, and then moved on.

Ludicrous! Next time it happens to me, I'll check no-one's looking, and lay the blighter out!

 

[Bejasus]

[ QUOTE ]
Said drunk was clearly incapable, incoherent, and abusive. Ludicrous! Next time it happens to me, I'll check no-one's looking, and lay the blighter out!

[/ QUOTE ]

so of course, you've never had a bad day, or been any of the above??
I know that at some time in my life, I have been all of the above.
Doesn't mean to say I should necessarily have been arrested or laid out. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

[KREW2]

Well whatever happened to justifiable homicide?
K W

 

[Gunfleet]

Look at it from the copper's POV. He arrests the drunk, takes him back to the nick and the man either a) sobers up or b) turns into a hospital case. If he puts him in a cell and the man chokes on his own vomit and dies, the copper is responsible. He simply can't win. In the unlikely event the man ended up in the magistrates court he'd be bound over.

 

[trev]

I have an old airgun (about twenty five years old) of the same model as that used by the teacher. - It couldn't hit a barn door from thirty feet, and is about as lethal as throwing a pebble. I know from personal experience it doesn't puncture skin from three feet away - hardly a 'firearm'.

 

[Lakesailor]

[ QUOTE ]
I have an old airgun (about twenty five years old) of the same model as that used by the teacher. - It couldn't hit a barn door from thirty feet, and is about as lethal as throwing a pebble. I know from personal experience it doesn't puncture skin from three feet away - hardly a 'firearm'.

[/ QUOTE ]

Try it in your eye!

 

[sailorman]

[The power level is 12 foot pounds for a rifle,[

this limit was bought in to stop the higher powered foriegn rifles comming into the UK as our manufactuters were un able to make / design rifles above this power so was a protectionist order & nothing more /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[scarlett]

I disagree with Blair. I don't feel sorry for her. The sentence was too short. She should have know better. She is a teacher I wouldn't want her near anybody's kids again. People have to learn to control their feelings or take the consequences.

 

[Benbow]

A relative of mine lost an eye and came within a hairsbreadth of loosing his life thanks to a moron with an airpistol.

 

[ZuidWester]

Youth out of control

Check out this article from the Guardian today:


'I wasn't teaching - my role was just one of crowd control. I felt useless'

An undercover documentary to be shown this week will reignite the debate about pupils' behaviour. Amelia Hill talks to the former teacher who couldn't ignore the chaos in her classroom

Sunday April 24, 2005
The Observer

Sylvia Thomas taught in many rough schools throughout the Seventies without ever needing to raise her voice to keep control.
In the Eighties, she left teaching and began producing educational programmes for the BBC. She spent much of her time in schools and thought she was seeing a realistic picture of classroom discipline: it was, she believed, not the acute problem some claimed.

But then, last autumn, she returned to education as a supply teacher. She was so shocked by what she saw that she joined forces with the award-winning veteran documentary maker, Roger Graef, to expose it. 'Most people are talking about low-level disruption in schools but very few get to see it,' she said. 'In only two schools out of the 18 at which I taught was there anything even resembling the acceptable level of disruption a supply teacher would expect. Every other school I taught at reduced me to tears,' she added. 'I would be hoarse with shouting and desperate not to go back the next day.'

Thomas spent six months recording the chaos of classrooms in state schools across the country using hidden cameras without the knowledge of the schools, parents or students involved. The result, Classroom Chaos, will be shown on Channel Five on Wednesday. The channel will tell the schools they have appeared in the controversial programme the day after it is screened.

Graef, whose 1982 documentary, Police, transformed the way in which rape cases were investigated by capturing a complainant being bullied and intimidated by male officers on film, believes Classroom Chaos is one of the most powerful films he has made. 'There are very few programmes that really change things but this is one of the few that really could - and should,' he said.

'One of the most important things about Classroom Chaos is that the schools were chosen randomly by Thomas's supply teacher agencies, and most had been identified by Ofsted as being average or better than average.

'The situation was so constant that we can confidently say anti-social behaviour is an everyday reality in classrooms across Britain,' he added. 'It is an appaling situation and one which must not be allowed to continue: education is being strangled.'

Thomas's experiences included:

· her classroom being vandalised during a break time, with windows smashed and glass thrown around the room, books destroyed and desks overturned;

· boys openly using mobile phones to download pornography, accessing obscene websites on school computers and making serious sexual suggestions to her;

· a pupil accusing her of hitting him, and threatening to report her to the police and sue her;

· having to stand guard by the classroom door to prevent students walking out.

'These were the most dramatic incidents but it was the constant, low-level disruptions that ground me down,' said Thomas. 'Just getting the children to take off their coats and open their bags was a struggle I often lost.

'Most of the time, it was as though I did not even exist: they would behave exactly like it was break time, sitting with their backs to me, talking over me, throwing things at each other and getting into fights. There was nothing I could do to get their attention. My role was simply one of crowd control. I felt useless and inadequate,'

Thomas estimates that, on average, she failed to teach anything at all in four out of six lessons a day. Experienced teachers to whom she spoke confirmed that they lose around two to three months a year of effective teaching through struggling to control antisocial classroom behaviour.

'When I was teaching in large state secondary schools in the Seventies, it was rough but I was a cheeky little kid myself in the classroom so I knew the score,' said Thomas. 'But being cheeky in those days meant you whispered in the back row, not that you did the sorts of things I saw in every single school I taught in on my return.'

Thomas assumed the fault must lie with her teaching methods until she asked heads of departments to visit her classes and found her efforts were praised. 'It was when I heard lessons being taught by full-time teachers whose pupils were just as loud as mine, and who were having to shout at them just as much as I was, that I realised the state of my classrooms was normal,' she said.

The reasons behind the constant low-level disruption are manifold, believes Thomas.

'The way teachers' authority has been eroded is key,' she said. 'It is not simply that there is no respect for teachers or authority but that the children are actually in control of the schools. They own them and the teachers have no power to take that control back.'

Thomas illustrates her point with an incident when a boy walked out of her class during a lesson. 'If I tried to stop him leaving by taking his arm, it would have been his word against mine that I hadn't abused him and I would be suspended while the incident was investigated, which could take three years. My name would be in the local press and my reputation as a teacher would be destroyed. The children are very worldly-wise: they know they have this power.'

Thomas also blames parents, many of whom she believes regard teachers and schools with antagonism, do not value education, and blame teachers for discipline problems they fail to tackle at home.

An increasingly prescriptive curriculum and ever-changing guidelines are also draining teachers' enthusiasm and boring students, according to Thomas: 'When I was a student, my teachers hooked me by their interpretation of their subjects but I don't think that could happen now because teachers are ordered not to deviate from the point-by-point lesson plans we are given. It is phenomenally prescriptive and the teachers are given no space to make their lessons relevant to the students.'

Thomas also questions the policy of student inclusion: 'I had pupils who could not write and others with serious behavioural issues,' she said. 'I didn't see the policy helping vulnerable children to cope but I did see their behaviour rubbing off on others.'

Despite it all, Thomas found the schools were well maintained and had good IT provision. She also admitted the children did appear to learn. 'Some of the kids managed to rise above the chaos. They have got used to working with a cacophony of noise and they have developed filters to take it out.'

Overall, however, the experience was harrowing. 'If we can't get the kids educated, what are we left with? Civilisation is built on education and society is going to become increasingly segregated between the children who have been to good schools and those who have not,' she said.

'I leave my supply teaching a sadder person,' she added. 'Children are clearly the most important thing in education but the time has come to give classrooms back to the teachers and to the pupils who want to learn. Teachers are the unsung heroes but they are losing the will to fight.'

 

[ZuidWester]

Youth out of control

Check out this article from the Observer:


'I wasn't teaching - my role was just one of crowd control. I felt useless'

An undercover documentary to be shown this week will reignite the debate about pupils' behaviour. Amelia Hill talks to the former teacher who couldn't ignore the chaos in her classroom

Sunday April 24, 2005
The Observer

Sylvia Thomas taught in many rough schools throughout the Seventies without ever needing to raise her voice to keep control.
In the Eighties, she left teaching and began producing educational programmes for the BBC. She spent much of her time in schools and thought she was seeing a realistic picture of classroom discipline: it was, she believed, not the acute problem some claimed.

But then, last autumn, she returned to education as a supply teacher. She was so shocked by what she saw that she joined forces with the award-winning veteran documentary maker, Roger Graef, to expose it. 'Most people are talking about low-level disruption in schools but very few get to see it,' she said. 'In only two schools out of the 18 at which I taught was there anything even resembling the acceptable level of disruption a supply teacher would expect. Every other school I taught at reduced me to tears,' she added. 'I would be hoarse with shouting and desperate not to go back the next day.'

Thomas spent six months recording the chaos of classrooms in state schools across the country using hidden cameras without the knowledge of the schools, parents or students involved. The result, Classroom Chaos, will be shown on Channel Five on Wednesday. The channel will tell the schools they have appeared in the controversial programme the day after it is screened.

Graef, whose 1982 documentary, Police, transformed the way in which rape cases were investigated by capturing a complainant being bullied and intimidated by male officers on film, believes Classroom Chaos is one of the most powerful films he has made. 'There are very few programmes that really change things but this is one of the few that really could - and should,' he said.

'One of the most important things about Classroom Chaos is that the schools were chosen randomly by Thomas's supply teacher agencies, and most had been identified by Ofsted as being average or better than average.

'The situation was so constant that we can confidently say anti-social behaviour is an everyday reality in classrooms across Britain,' he added. 'It is an appaling situation and one which must not be allowed to continue: education is being strangled.'

Thomas's experiences included:

· her classroom being vandalised during a break time, with windows smashed and glass thrown around the room, books destroyed and desks overturned;

· boys openly using mobile phones to download pornography, accessing obscene websites on school computers and making serious sexual suggestions to her;

· a pupil accusing her of hitting him, and threatening to report her to the police and sue her;

· having to stand guard by the classroom door to prevent students walking out.

'These were the most dramatic incidents but it was the constant, low-level disruptions that ground me down,' said Thomas. 'Just getting the children to take off their coats and open their bags was a struggle I often lost.

'Most of the time, it was as though I did not even exist: they would behave exactly like it was break time, sitting with their backs to me, talking over me, throwing things at each other and getting into fights. There was nothing I could do to get their attention. My role was simply one of crowd control. I felt useless and inadequate,'

Thomas estimates that, on average, she failed to teach anything at all in four out of six lessons a day. Experienced teachers to whom she spoke confirmed that they lose around two to three months a year of effective teaching through struggling to control antisocial classroom behaviour.

'When I was teaching in large state secondary schools in the Seventies, it was rough but I was a cheeky little kid myself in the classroom so I knew the score,' said Thomas. 'But being cheeky in those days meant you whispered in the back row, not that you did the sorts of things I saw in every single school I taught in on my return.'

Thomas assumed the fault must lie with her teaching methods until she asked heads of departments to visit her classes and found her efforts were praised. 'It was when I heard lessons being taught by full-time teachers whose pupils were just as loud as mine, and who were having to shout at them just as much as I was, that I realised the state of my classrooms was normal,' she said.

The reasons behind the constant low-level disruption are manifold, believes Thomas.

'The way teachers' authority has been eroded is key,' she said. 'It is not simply that there is no respect for teachers or authority but that the children are actually in control of the schools. They own them and the teachers have no power to take that control back.'

Thomas illustrates her point with an incident when a boy walked out of her class during a lesson. 'If I tried to stop him leaving by taking his arm, it would have been his word against mine that I hadn't abused him and I would be suspended while the incident was investigated, which could take three years. My name would be in the local press and my reputation as a teacher would be destroyed. The children are very worldly-wise: they know they have this power.'

Thomas also blames parents, many of whom she believes regard teachers and schools with antagonism, do not value education, and blame teachers for discipline problems they fail to tackle at home.

An increasingly prescriptive curriculum and ever-changing guidelines are also draining teachers' enthusiasm and boring students, according to Thomas: 'When I was a student, my teachers hooked me by their interpretation of their subjects but I don't think that could happen now because teachers are ordered not to deviate from the point-by-point lesson plans we are given. It is phenomenally prescriptive and the teachers are given no space to make their lessons relevant to the students.'

Thomas also questions the policy of student inclusion: 'I had pupils who could not write and others with serious behavioural issues,' she said. 'I didn't see the policy helping vulnerable children to cope but I did see their behaviour rubbing off on others.'

Despite it all, Thomas found the schools were well maintained and had good IT provision. She also admitted the children did appear to learn. 'Some of the kids managed to rise above the chaos. They have got used to working with a cacophony of noise and they have developed filters to take it out.'

Overall, however, the experience was harrowing. 'If we can't get the kids educated, what are we left with? Civilisation is built on education and society is going to become increasingly segregated between the children who have been to good schools and those who have not,' she said.

'I leave my supply teaching a sadder person,' she added. 'Children are clearly the most important thing in education but the time has come to give classrooms back to the teachers and to the pupils who want to learn. Teachers are the unsung heroes but they are losing the will to fight.'

 

[Alastairdent]

Re: Youth out of control

Oh, dear, I have this dreadful, deep understanding of how she feels - what *do* you do when you try to hand a ball to a 13yr old and they scream "get away from me, you pedo."?

The ones I teach are universally from a middle-class background - and saying "Would you like me to repeat to your parents what you just said?" does the trick - they start behaving.

But kids from inner cities & their similarly minded parents? Rather put my b*ll*ks in a tank of piranah.